Aug 272021
 
 August 27, 2021  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Claude Monet Hollowed Cliff near Étretat 1883

 

Coroner Confirms 44-Year-old BBC Presenter Died From Vaccine Side Effect (RT)
New Zealand Police Break Up One-Person Anti-lockdown Protest In Auckland (G.)
‘Bombshell’ Study Finds Natural Immunity Superior To Vaccination (Unherd)
The Suspicious FDA “Approval” Of The Pfizer Vaccine (Techno Fog)
******nit, Stop The FRAUD (Denninger)
What Can We Learn About COVID Tyranny From Australia And Afghanistan? (Smith)
The Weaponization Of Medicine (FMP)
Health Workers Protest Against Introduction Of Mandatory Covid Jabs (K.)
Arkansas Jail Dosing Inmates With Ivermectin, In Spite Of FDA Warnings (AP)
The Cost-Benefit Analysis of COVID (Greenwald)
Biden Does Surreal Press Conference, Vows To Hunt Down Isis, Blames Trump (ZH)
US Provided Taliban With Names Of Americans, Afghan Allies To Evacuate (Pol.)
Taliban Opens Chain Of U.S. Army Surplus Stores (BBee)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who ordered this autopsy? Where are the reports on all the other autopsies?

Coroner Confirms 44-Year-old BBC Presenter Died From Vaccine Side Effect (RT)

A coroner’s report has confirmed that late BBC Radio presenter Lisa Shaw died from “complications” related to AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine. Shaw died on May 21 at the age of 44 roughly three weeks after she received her first dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. She did not have any known underlying health problems but developed blood clots after receiving the jab. On Thursday – over three months after her death – a coroner finally confirmed that Shaw died from complications that were suffered as a result of vaccination. Coroner Karen Dilks declared that Shaw “died due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination,” or specifically, “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia” which caused the blood clots in her brain.


In the weeks after the vaccine, Shaw had complained about severe headaches. Some 332 similar cases and 58 deaths have been recorded in relation to the AstraZeneca vaccine. Many countries have suspended or completely stopped the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, with some limiting its use for those over the age of 60. In the UK, however, the age restriction is significantly lower. On May 7, just over a week after Shaw received her dose, the UK government announced that those under the age of 40 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca “if available and if it does not cause delays in having the vaccine.” The government currently warns that AstraZeneca’s side effects can include rare blood clots, capillary leak syndrome and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and that those who experience “a severe headache that is not relieved with simple painkillers or is getting worse or feels worse” should “seek medical advice urgently.”

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How do you “break up” one person?

New Zealand Police Break Up One-Person Anti-lockdown Protest In Auckland (G.)

A one-person anti-lockdown protest in central Auckland has been shut down, after the police were alerted to discussions of a potential gathering on social media. New Zealand police said officers were on Queen Street on Friday after hearing a protest was being planned, but only one person arrived with the intention of protesting, Newshub reported. “Police have been in the area and have spoken to one person who arrived intending to attend the protest. Police spoke to the individual who was encouraged to comply with alert level four restrictions and chose to leave,” a spokesman said. They said they are continuing to monitor the situation. An Instagram account had called on people “who see the bigger picture” to get involved in the protest, Newshub reported, despite also saying it wasn’t involved in the demonstration and had no idea who was behind it.


The post criticised prime minister Jacinda Ardern and the government for “destroying the economy” and “destroying jobs”, despite the unemployment rate dropping to 4 percent in the June 2021 quarter and the economy weathering the pandemic better than expected. Last week, around 100 anti-lockdown protesters gathered on Queen Street, and four people were arrested. Four people were also arrested at a protest of about 20 people in the city of Tauranga outside the local police station. Another group gathered outside a police station in the South Island city of Nelson the same day, but dispersed after officers issued 20 verbal warnings.

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We’ve known this all along. Where’s the bombshell?

‘Bombshell’ Study Finds Natural Immunity Superior To Vaccination (Unherd)

A major study conducted by Israeli researchers into natural immunity has found that immunity acquired via infection from Covid-19 is superior to immunity from the Pfizer vaccine. Researchers at Maccabi Healthcare and Tel Aviv University compared the outcomes of over 76,000 Israelis in three groups: the doubly vaccinated (with the Pfizer vaccine), the previously infected but unvaccinated, and the previously infected with a single dose. They found that fully vaccinated people were significantly more likely to have a “breakthrough” Covid infection than people who had previously been infected and recovered from the disease. “This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalisation caused by the Delta variant,” the authors conclude.


The study is only published as a preprint at this stage and has not been peer reviewed. Critics including British immunologist Andrew Croxford have pointed out potential limitations, but it has been described by infectious diseases expert Professor Francois Balloux as a “bombshell” development. If the findings are confirmed, the implications for global Covid policy will be profound. It would not undermine the importance of vaccination for more vulnerable groups in society. However it would weaken the case for vaccinating children, despite the programme being confirmed in the UK today, as they (and the people around them) would get superior future protection from contracting the disease. And it would pose a fundamental challenge to the singular emphasis on vaccine passports for travel and large events, if unvaccinated people who have already had Covid actually pose less of a risk.

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“For those who received two doses of the Pfizer Vaccine in January 2021, the vaccine is “only 16% effective against symptomatic infection.”

The Suspicious FDA “Approval” Of The Pfizer Vaccine (Techno Fog)

The FDA says COMIRNATY is “safe and effective in preventing COVID-19 in individuals 16 years of age and older.” How effective? They state (~6 months after dose 2) that it is “91% effective in preventing COVID-19 disease,” citing to a study where Pfizer observed “77 cases of COVID-19 occurring in the vaccine group.” This leaves us with an important question. The Pfizer study is from a “follow-up through March 13, 2021.” That is over 5 months ago. Is the FDA using outdated data in support of the COMIRNATY approval? In other words, how long does the effectiveness really last? Pfizer has an answer for us. According to its August 23, 2021 fact sheet, “The duration of protection against COVID-19 is currently unknown.”

If you’re looking for data on the waning effectiveness of the Pfizer Vaccine against COVID-19, you have to search for yourself. You won’t find it with the FDA or Pfizer, underscoring an apparent effort to cherry-pick the data for the “approval.” According to one UK study of over 400,000 people (a study that is, by the way, much more rigorous than the one cited in the FDA approval), the “effectiveness fell to 74% five or sixth months after receiving both doses of the Pfizer vaccine.”

The news out of Israel is worse. For those who received two doses of the Pfizer Vaccine in January 2021, the vaccine is “only 16% effective against symptomatic infection.”

As we have observed, the CDC has promoted a misleading message on the risks the vaccines present to pregnant mothers. They used self-reporting studies that were racially skewed studies (~79% white and 1.4% black) and limited to looking at miscarriages from weeks 6-20. (This caused them to omit from the study 35 self-reported pregnancy losses at less than 6 weeks.) The new approval mentions a study on the Pfizer Vaccine exposure during pregnancy to be completed in 2025. Four years from now pregnant women will know whether this vaccine is safe. As for the current data? Here’s what the COMIRNATY package insert says about there being “insufficient” information on the vaccine risks to pregnancy.

Ok Techno, I’m with you so far… but did Pfizer do any studies on whether the vaccine was safe for pregnant women? YES! They did toxicology studies on female rats.

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“..if being vaccinated makes the person who gets it more-infectious then being jabbed is not only personally dangerous it is dangerous to public health..”

******nit, Stop The FRAUD (Denninger)

in the best case you must repeatedly take the risk of strokes and heart attacks, along with other serious adverse effects, in order to maintain protection. If the risk is 1/10,000 to do it once then the risk is 1/5,000 to do it twice, assuming the risk is linear which we do not know. If its exponential, and there is a strong suggestion that is the case because most of these events occurred after the second jab in the series, then the risk from taking three jabs may be 1/1,000 instead of 1/10,000 which is ridiculously higher and makes the decision to risk infection rather than vaccination simple for most people since only the quite-morbid are at higher risk from infection than 1/1,000 (0.1%) even if we assume the risk of eventual infection, if you do nothing, is 100%.

Note that if there is no end to these jabs then eventually even the most-morbid are stupid to take them since the risk of the jab killing them will rapidly exceed that of the virus doing so and this assumes that vaccine-induced enhancement does not show up and wildly multiply the risk of serious disease and death from the virus itself. There is no way to know whether these risks will converge either naturally or by forced action of a malevolent party but that they exist and are independently present is now known with scientific certainty as all of those mutations have now been found in the gene banks from sampled patients. If that “next mutation” winds up being of benefit to “being first” in an uninfected, non-recovered host and worse, if being vaccinated makes the person who gets it more-infectious then being jabbed is not only personally dangerous it is dangerous to public health and will cause a wave of serious illness and death to tear through the vaccinated population and if that happens there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

The FDA knows all of this as they have the same access to the published scientific work I do. They didn’t hold a hearing or take public comment, as they are supposed to, because then people like myself could submit into the formal, government record papers like the one I cited above. In addition the FDA cut off the data far enough back to deliberately ignore the most-recent few weeks, which show crazy deterioration in the percentage of people who die of Covid-19 and are vaccinated. In some counties (e.g. Clark, NV) the vaccinated are now the majority of the deaths. Does this prove vaccine-induced enhancement is here and raging? No; the data is too thin. But what it does prove is that being jabbed doesn’t stop you from getting sick nor does it stop you from giving the virus to others and that by itself reduces the decision to be vaccinated to one of personal choice at best.

And finally even Pfizer admits that they can’t get ahead of such a mutational event whether it occurs naturally or is forced and released by a malevolent actor. They say they can turn around a new version of the jab within 95 days but then you have to get it into the hundreds of millions of Americans and that can’t happen any faster the second time than the first. Assuming you immediately can ramp up production and distribution expecting that you can get effective coverage within less than another three to six months is fantasy-level bull**** as we didn’t manage that the first time and the virus mutates faster than you can accomplish it, making the attempt a game of whack-a-mole which you will inevitably lose. Never mind the risk that the reformulated version may produce immediate and extremely dangerous adverse events at a wildly-elevated rate: Without trials, which again will add months or years to the time required to deploy, there is no way to know! It is sheer arrogance to presume none of this will happen when we now have hard proof that least some of it did with the first go-around.

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“..these measures cannot be fast tracked in the same way in the US because Americans are heavily armed and have the ability to bury the establishment six feet under if we organized to do so..”

What Can We Learn About COVID Tyranny From Australia And Afghanistan? (Smith)

I have warned consistently that all governments around the world would eventually try to adopt proof of vaccination requirements in order for people to participate in everyday activities such as going to public venues, going to school, shopping in stores or even getting a job. The mainstream media and governments consistently claimed last year that vaccine passports were “not going to happen”, and that the very notion was a conspiracy theory. Now, the vaccines passports are being implemented in numerous countries including some parts of the US and anyone who stands against them is called a “conspiracy theorists”. You see how that works? If you expose the truth of an authoritarian plot the establishment lies and calls you a “conspiracy theorist”.

Once the establishment admits to the plot and you refuse to comply with it those same liars call you a conspiracy theorist AGAIN, as well as a “terrorist.” Yes, this was also predicted by myself and others at the beginning of the pandemic. We said that the people that fight against vaccine passport tyranny would be quickly labeled as traitors and terrorists “putting others at risk” because we are too “selfish” to bow down and take the experimental jab or submit to the lockdowns. This is exactly what has happened, with the DHS recently announcing that one of the warning signs of a potential terrorist includes opposition to covid mandates and vaccines.

I also predicted that the ultimate goal of the covid agenda will be to create domestic travel restrictions and state and city checkpoints, not to mention covid “camps” or prisons for the unvaccinated. In the US the DHS is admitting that they are entertaining the concept of interstate travel limits and a “papers please” system to prevent Americans from moving around freely. The state of New York hinted at covid camps many months ago, but the real plan is being revealed overseas in other Western nations like Australia and New Zealand.

And here is where we find the telegraphed punches… I have specifically examined Australia and New Zealand’s fast track covid tyranny plans a year ago in my article ‘The Totalitarian Future Globalists Want For The Entire World Is Being Revealed’ and I noted that whatever happens in these countries along with certain countries in Europe is going to be tried in the US in the near term. The main difference being that these measures cannot be fast tracked in the same way in the US because Americans are heavily armed and have the ability to bury the establishment six feet under if we organized to do so.

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“Once “medicine” and “science” are mixed with social pressure, they are no longer science or medicine. At that point they are instruments of thuggery, and nothing more.”

The Weaponization Of Medicine (FMP)

#1: Science is not consensus. Ten, one hundred, or a million people, all draped in lab coats and saying the same thing, does NOT make it so. In fact, it matters not at all. It’s nothing but theater, and it’s anti-science. All science is, really, is a process of testing ideas; it is not an organization, it is not based upon authority (it’s inherently anti-authority), and it is very certainly not allied with power. All that matters in science are verifiable results.

#2: Medicine stands apart from, and above, politics. Medicine is the application of science to the furtherance of human health. Politics is the use of persuasion and power to rule masses of humans. These are fully separate disciplines. To place politics over medicine is to subjugate and degrade medicine: it’s a path backwards into darkness. I’ll leave details on this point to working medical practitioners, who can provide them with far greater specificity than I can… provided they’re not too frightened to do so.

#3: Peer review no longer means much. Again I won’t go into great detail, but peer review has been captured by academic hierarchies and almost fully separated from science proper. It has become a tool of institutional power, wielded by academics who have sold out science for the favors of power and politics. At one time, “peer review” referred to the honest replication of experiments. That time is past.

#4: Medicine and science have nothing to do with social pressure. Once “medicine” and “science” are mixed with social pressure, they are no longer science or medicine. At that point they are instruments of thuggery, and nothing more.

#5: If you don’t read multiple scientific papers, especially from rebels and cast-outs, you simply don’t know. You can pretend you know, of course, and you can be sure that agents of the status quo will provide you with passable reasons to repeat their slogans, but you won’t actually know. What you see on TV is propaganda. What you see on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is pre-censored. If you want to really know, you’ll have to find the scientific papers that address your question… and you’ll need papers that are rejected by televised authorities. If you don’t, all you’ll have are pre-censored conclusions, the underlying facts of which may or may not be reliable. At this point, if you don’t include “conspiracy theory” research, you’re more or less stuck with Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Sad but mostly true.

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Working their asses off for 20 months and getting a mandate as their reward.

Health Workers Protest Against Introduction Of Mandatory Covid Jabs (K.)

Hundreds of Greek frontline health workers protested on Thursday against a plan to make Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for the care sector as infection rates remained high. Healthcare workers observed a four-hour work stoppage against new rules obliging medical staff to vaccinate against the coronavirus, and to call for more resources to public health. The mandatory jab comes into effect for healthcare workers on Sept. 1. Those who do not comply and have not had at least one shot of a vaccine will be suspended from their jobs. According to the POEDIN labor union, about 10 percent of healthcare workers have not had a first vaccine jab. Protesters said that while the call for vaccination was widely acknowledged and complied with by healthcare workers, the view of a dissenting few should to be respected.


“I’m here today because I want to support the constitutional right of every Greek citizen to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to vaccination. I personally am vaccinated, but I believe it is my colleagues’ right to not get vaccinated if they don’t want to,” said Evangelia Karatzouli, a nurse at a public hospital. Greece on Thursday reported 3,538 new coronavirus cases in a single day, with 28 deaths. It reported a record daily rate of 4,608 infections on Tuesday. read more The Greek public hospital workers union will support unvaccinated colleagues, said its president, Michalis Yiannakos. “They consist of a tiny number, and have for the last 18-19 months been on the frontlines, caring for patients in the Covid wards, and have not ever gotten infected, and now they are being thrown out on the streets,” he said.

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“Whatever a doctor prescribes, that is not in my bailiwick..”

Arkansas Jail Dosing Inmates With Ivermectin, In Spite Of FDA Warnings (AP)

Inmates at a north-west Arkansas jail have been prescribed a medicine for treating coronavirus that is normally used to deworm livestock, despite federal health warnings to the public in exasperated tones. Washington county’s sheriff confirmed this week that the jail’s health provider had been prescribing the drug. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal drugs regulator, issued a warning via Twitter last weekend. “You are not a horse,” it said. “You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” Sheriff Tim Helder did not say how many inmates at the 710-bed facility had been given ivermectin and defended the health provider that has been prescribing the medication. “Whatever a doctor prescribes, that is not in my bailiwick,” Helder told members of the Washington county quorum court, the county’s governing body.


[..] It is not clear what information inmates who were prescribed the drug have been given about it, including warnings that it is not approved to treat Covid. The US FDA has approved ivermectin in both people and animals for some parasitic worms and for head lice and skin conditions. The FDA has not approved its use in treating or preventing Covid-19 in humans. “Using any treatment for Covid-19 that’s not approved or authorized by the FDA, unless part of a clinical trial, can cause serious harm,” the FDA said in a warning about the drug. Prominent rightwingers have been promoting the drug for Covid and public health officials have come under attack from some Republicans for urging Americans to get vaccinated against coronavirus.

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Zero.

The Cost-Benefit Analysis of COVID (Greenwald)

[..] we employ a rational framework of cost-benefit analysis, whereby, when making public policy choices, we do not examine only one side of the ledger (number of people who will die if cars are permitted) but also consider the immense costs generated by policies that would prevent those deaths (massive limits on our ability to travel, vastly increased times to get from one place to another, restrictions on what we can experience in our lives, enormous financial costs from returning to the pre-automobile days). So foundational is the use of this cost-benefit analysis that it is embraced and touted by everyone from right-wing economists to the left-wing European environmental policy group CIVITAS, which defines it this way:

“Social Cost Benefit Analysis [is] a decision support tool that measures and weighs various impacts of a project or policy. It compares project costs (capital and operating expenses) with a broad range of (social) impacts, e.g. travel time savings, travel costs, impacts on other modes, climate, safety, and the environment.” This framework, above all else, precludes an absolutist approach to rational policy-making. We never opt for a society-altering policy on the ground that “any lives saved make it imperative to embrace” precisely because such a primitive mindset ignores all the countervailing costs which this life-saving policy would generate (including, oftentimes, loss of life as well: banning planes, for instance, would save lives by preventing deaths from airplane crashes, but would also create its own new deaths by causing more people to drive cars).

While arguments are common about how this framework should be applied and which specific policies are ideal, the use of cost-benefit analysis as the primary formula we use is uncontroversial — at least it was until the COVID pandemic began. It is now extremely common in Western democracies for large factions of citizens to demand that any measures undertaken to prevent COVID deaths are vital, regardless of the costs imposed by those policies. Thus, this mentality insists, we must keep schools closed to avoid the contracting by children of COVID regardless of the horrific costs which eighteen months or two years of school closures impose on all children.

It is impossible to overstate the costs imposed on children of all ages from the sustained, enduring and severe disruptions to their lives justified in the name of COVID. Entire books could be written, and almost certainly will be, on the multiple levels of damage children are sustaining, some of which — particularly the longer-term ones — are unknowable (long-term harms from virtually every aspect of COVID policies — including COVID itself, the vaccines, and isolation measures, are, by definition, unknown). But what we know for certain is that the harms to children from anti-COVID measures are severe and multi-pronged.

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This is far from over.

Biden Does Surreal Press Conference, Vows To Hunt Down Isis, Blames Trump (ZH)

President Biden on Thursday vowed to “hunt down” the terrorists responsible for a spate of deadly bombings at the Kabul airport which left 12 US servicemembers dead and 15 wounded. “Know this; We will not forgive. We will not forget. We. will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said. In a surreal press conference that included bible quotes, a moment of silence, and blaming President Trump, Biden said he was open to sending US forces back into Afghanistan to assist with the withdrawal. “Whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it,” he said, adding that the US military can target ISIS-K without “large scale military operations.”


Biden said he was in near ‘constant’ communication with military commanders via letter, and that he’d asked them to draw up plans to retaliate against the terrorist group (via carrier pigeon?). Of note, after reading his speech on the teleprompter, Biden said out loud “The first person I was instructed to call upon…” before taking questions. Trump also said he ‘bears responsibility for all that’s happened,’ before turning around and blaming Trump for the deal he ‘inherited.’ He then gave Trump credit for the only reason there was relative peace in Afghanistan until now. Then, towards the end of the presser, Biden said “I have another meeting, for real” – implying other ‘meetings’ haven’t been?

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“It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”

US Provided Taliban With Names Of Americans, Afghan Allies To Evacuate (Pol.)

U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials. The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.

Since the fall of Kabul in mid-August, nearly 100,000 people have been evacuated, most of whom had to pass through the Taliban’s many checkpoints. But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials. “Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.” Asked about POLITICO’s reporting during a Thursday news conference, President Joe Biden said he wasn’t sure there were such lists, but also didn’t deny that sometimes the U.S. hands over names to the Taliban.

“There have been occasions when our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said this, for example, this bus is coming through with X number of people on it, made up of the following group of people. We want you to let that bus or that group through,” he said. “So, yes there have been occasions like that. To the best of my knowledge, in those cases, the bulk of that has occurred and they have been let through. “I can’t tell you with any certitude that there’s actually been a list of names,” he added. “There may have been. But I know of no circumstance. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, that here’s the names of 12 people, they’re coming, let them through. It could very well have happened.”

[..] After the fall of Kabul, in the earliest days of the evacuation, the joint U.S. military and diplomatic coordination team at the airport provided the Taliban with a list of people the U.S. aimed to evacuate. Those names included Afghans who served alongside the U.S. during the 20-year war and sought special immigrant visas to America. U.S. citizens, dual nationals and lawful permanent residents were also listed. “They had to do that because of the security situation the White House created by allowing the Taliban to control everything outside the airport,” one U.S. official said. But after thousands of visa applicants arrived at the airport, overwhelming the capacity of the U.S. to process them, the State Department changed course — asking the applicants not to come to the airport and instead requesting they wait until they were cleared for entry. From then on, the list fed to the Taliban didn’t include those Afghan names. As of Aug. 25, only U.S. passport and green card holders were being accepted as eligible for evacuation, the defense official said.

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“The U.S. Government has taken note as new store locations open up for future drone pilot target practice.”

Taliban Opens Chain Of U.S. Army Surplus Stores (BBee)

Now that Allah has seen fit to bless the Taliban with bountiful weapons and equipment from the U.S. Military, terrorists around Afghanistan have built an already thriving chain of U.S. Army Surplus stores. “We need weapons to kill and subjugate the Afghan people under Sharia Law, but there’s just too much gear here!” said local Taliban leader Bob Muhammed. “There’s, like, billions of dollars and 20 years worth of weaponry around here, and now I can build a thriving business out of selling my wares to other terrorist folk who happen to pass through! Allah be praised!”


Although the merchandise will not be available to the general public (for obvious reasons), Muhammed’s Army Surplus will feature a full selection of deadly weaponry, ammunition, combat boots, MREs, helmets, hashish, and whatever else a soldier of Allah may need. If successful, Bob Muhammed hopes to open more stores in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. Government has taken note as new store locations open up for future drone pilot target practice.

Read more …

 

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Aug 202021
 


Henri Matisse Music 1910

 

People With 2 COVID-19 Shots Fully Vaccinated Without Booster: Surgeon General (ET)
Top Doctor: Mass Vaccination Program One Of The Most Deadly Mistakes In History (LSN)
Now Is The Time To Use Ivermectin: Chairman Of Tokyo Met Medical Ass’n
Supreme Court Knocks Down ‘Covid Passport’ In Andalucia (EW)
Spain Court Orders End To Barcelona Virus Curfew (B’s)
Greek Gov’t Not Backing Down On Health Worker Vaccinations (K.)
US Promises Not To Charge Americans To Fly Out Of Afghanistan (RT)
Biden State Dept Halted A Trump-Era ‘Crisis Response’ Plan 2 Months Ago (NP)
Leaked State Department Memo Warned Of Afghanistan Collapse (ZH)
The Worst Presidential Dereliction in Memory (Noah Rothman)
The Ides of August (Sarah Chayes)
Assabiya Wins Every Time (Lee Smith)

 

 

 

 

In the EU, as of 14.8.21, 826,000 have had 2.07 million adverse reactions to the jab, of which 21,776 died.

 

 

It’s official: anything goes.

People With 2 COVID-19 Shots Fully Vaccinated Without Booster: Surgeon General (ET)

Americans who have received two COVID-19 vaccine doses are considered fully vaccinated, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said Wednesday. “I think what’s very important for people to know is that if you’ve gotten both shots of your mRNA vaccine, you are fully vaccinated right now; you have full—you have a high degree of protection against the worst outcomes of COVID-19,” Murthy told reporters during a virtual briefing. The definition of fully vaccinated could prove key in the coming months. More and more jurisdictions are requiring proof of vaccination to enter businesses. At some point, people could be required to show proof of having received three doses, especially if health officials signaled their support.

Murthy suggested that could come later, pending authorization from the FDAvand a recommendation from the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, known as ACIP. “Our recommendation down the line, pending the advice and the review of the FDA and ACIP … is that we believe that that third dose will ultimately be needed to provide the fullest and continual extent of protection that we think people need from the virus,” Murthy said. Experts are keeping a close watch on whether vaccine mandates will transition into requiring booster.

“Haven’t heard this debated yet… but in case the Covid events of the past month aren’t messy enough, wait for this one: When—and how—do vaccine mandates transition into booster mandates?” Bob Wachter, chair of the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Medicine, wrote on social media this week. Asked later on CNBC if CEOs should consider mandating boosters, Murthy said, “In my mind this doesn’t change what workplaces are doing.” “Right now, if you’re a business that’s thinking about putting in requirements for vaccines, if you’re a university that’s considering that, nothing in today’s announcement should change what you’re doing,” he added.

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“..about 88 percent of hospitalizations and deaths can be avoided with early treatment.”

But there still is no early treatment.

Mass Vaccination Program One Of The Most Deadly Mistakes In History (LSN)

The forced mass vaccination of Americans will be regarded as one of the most deadly and costly medical mistakes in history, renowned pioneer in the early treatment of COVID-19, Texas cardiologist and internist Dr. Peter McCullough, has said. Citing recent data from U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and from Israel and Britain, where COVID cases are multiplying among the vaccinated, McCullough, who is editor-in-chief of two medical journals and author of over 600 peer-reviewed studies, including 46 dedicated to COVID-19, said he is “deeply worried” about the future of America. “Americans are going to bear the brunt of what invariably is going to be a failed mass vaccination program that will go down as one of the most deadly, one of the most injurious and costly in human history,” McCullough said in a recent podcast.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced in April that it has stopped tracking COVID cases among the vaccinated that do not result in hospitalizations or deaths. The agency is now assuming that new cases are among the unvaccinated unless otherwise advised, which skews numbers to paint the unvaccinated as spreaders of disease. “This intentional misinformation and propaganda scheme has been used to drive an incredible fury of vaccine mandates” for government agencies, veterans administrations, and hundreds of schools and colleges, even though here have been no outbreaks in these places, McCullough said. Israel was the first country to mass vaccinate its population under an agreement with Pfizer to exchange vaccine supply for public health data in an experiment on the people “to evaluate whether herd immunity protection is observed during the Product vaccination program rollout.”

Eighty percent of adults are fully vaccinated there, yet COVID cases and serious hospitalizations have risen 20-fold since early July. The media has highlighted that most serious new cases have been among the unvaccinated, while neglecting to report that the majority (more than 80 percent) of new cases reported by the Israeli Health Ministry are among vaccinated individuals. In response, Israel introduced a third “booster shot” of Pfizer’s vaccine which has been administered to more than one million people as of August 16. In the United Kingdom, more than three-quarters of the adult population (76 percent) have received two doses of vaccine and almost 90 percent of adults have received at least one dose. Yet, the number of COVID patients hospitalized has soared sevenfold since early June this year.

The most recent U.K. report on “variants of concern” revealed that 54 percent of COVID deaths are among the fully vaccinated. A further 12 percent of deaths are among the partially vaccinated who have received one dose. That data, McCullough said, “is basically showing that the vaccines are failing.” Vaccinated individuals can acquire and transmit the pandemic coronavirus and become and die of COVID-19. “Completely vaccinated individuals are passing it to one another,” McCullough said. Nonetheless, citing the new, circulating Delta variant, the Biden administration is expected to follow Israel’s example and introduce a third booster shot for all nursing home residents and healthcare workers for September.

The vaccines were never tested for the Delta variant, and their protection has lasted only months. “It’s clear we can’t vaccinate our way out of this,” McCullough said. COVID-19, no matter what the variant, is easily treatable at home with simple, available drugs, according to McCullough, who has stated that “about 88 percent of hospitalizations and deaths can be avoided” with early treatment.

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Odd Google translate, but lots of info between the lines. IVM for Covid is legal, but not available.

Now Is The Time To Use Ivermectin: Chairman Of Tokyo Met Medical Ass’n

Why is Japan not trying to use ivermectin, which has few reports of side effects and has been reported to be effective in clinical trials in other countries? On August 5, we had an urgent interview with Mr. Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association, who had been proposing effective uses of ivermectin from early on.

[..] Ivermectin generic drugs are also manufactured in large quantities in China and India. If Merck doesn’t come out, there should be a way to import and supply it.

“That’s right. If the” Special Measures Bill for Designation and Use of Specified Drugs for the Treatment of New Influenza, etc. “(Japanese EUA * Maintenance Bill), which was submitted to the House of Representatives by Representative Nakajima, who is also a doctor, is passed, generic products But I think the government isn’t working at all at this point. ”

“The other problem is that ivermectin has already been used in many countries around the world, and its dosage, dosage, safety and efficacy have been confirmed, but it has not yet been done in clinical trials in Japan. For this reason, ivermectin is not covered by the drug side effect relief system. This makes it difficult for doctors to use. However, even in such anxiety and disadvantageous situations, doctors who are convinced of the effects of ivermectin. Some of us are prescribing ivermectin at our own risk. I hope that the Japanese version of the EUA maintenance law will be enacted as soon as possible. ”

EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) A system of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that permits the use of unapproved drugs in an emergency and expands the indications for approved drugs. The FDA is <1> a life-threatening disease <2> a certain degree of effectiveness is recognized in the treatment of diseases, etc. <3> The benefits of using it outweigh the potential risks of the product <4> Other diseases It is approved for use if it is determined that there is no suitable alternative to diagnose, prevent, or treat.

Since you admitted that it is not applicable, Japan is classified as an “Ivermectin user country” in the world, but it is a system that can not be used in reality.

“That’s right. In short, the government has not built a system that can supply ivermectin, so it is not a promotion system. If the Japanese version of EUA is prepared quickly and it becomes a system that can be used by doctors in the field, As Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Tamura replied in the Diet, it can actually be administered to patients who are waiting at home or undergoing medical treatment, but with the current system, virtually nothing can be done. However, if we remain cautious in the event of such an emergency, we can only understand that we are sacrificing the safety of the people. “

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Nice, but not on principal.

Supreme Court Knocks Down ‘Covid Passport’ In Andalucia (EW)

Supreme Court knocks down ‘covid passport’ to enter bars, restaurants and nightclubs in Andalucia The Supreme Court knocks down ‘covid passport’ to enter bars, restaurants and nightclubs in Andalucia. The Andalucian Government had hoped to use a COVID passport, but the Supreme Court has prevented this. The Andalucian Government had hoped to use a COVID passport control entry to hotels, nightlife venues and nightclubs across Andalucia. The Supreme Court has now rejected this request. The court believes that the proposed measure “does not pass the proportionality test” and that it shows a “justification deficit”. Therefore, it has decided to stand by the decision previously taken by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalucia.

This basically means that anyone in Andalucia will not have to show a vaccination certificate or a negative PCR test which was taken in the last 72 hours in order to enter nightclubs, restaurants and bars. The government of Moreno Bonilla had requested these measures, but Supreme Court have decided to overturn the request. The decision was made on two main arguments. The first is that the measure is not sufficiently justified. For the measure to be justified the government in Andalucia would need to prove “that the so-called fifth wave originates precisely in nightlife venues.” The second argument is one of being proportionate. The measure was intended to apply “over a large territory and in very different situations”.

This meant that the measure would be used across the whole of Andalucia, and the local coronavirus situation within each territory would not be considered. The measure failed the proportionality test. If applied the measure would have hit the hospitality sector without it ever having been proven that the main source of coronavirus infections came from this sector. As reported 20 minutes, “Finally, the court argues that it is not possible to restrict the fundamental rights of citizens with a preventive measure such as the ‘covid passport’: ‘It is not a measure that is punctually indispensable to safeguard public health (…), but rather a preventive measure when it happens that, for the restriction of fundamental rights, mere considerations of prudence or precaution are not sufficient’, the Supreme Court argues.”

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Same in Catalunya.

Spain Court Orders End To Barcelona Virus Curfew (B’s)

A Spanish court on Thursday lifted a coronavirus curfew imposed on most of Catalonia, including the capital Barcelona, leaving it in place in just a fraction of the northeastern region. Catalonia’s government in mid-July imposed a nightly curfew between 1:00 am and 6:00 am in most municipalities to fight a surge in virus cases, and the region’s top court then gave the green light to extend it three times. But on Friday, faced with a request by the regional government to keep the curfew in place in 148 municipalities, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia said the measure was “not justified” in 129 of them, because infection rates there had improved. “In these circumstances, the measures are not so much justified on health grounds, but for reasons of security or public order,” the court said in its ruling.

The Catalan government said in a statement it was “analysing” the court’s ruling, but added it “regrets that once again judges are acting as epidemiologists”. The curfew is intended to discourage social gatherings on beaches and in parks after nightclubs close at 12.30 am, which was suspected of fuelling a spike in cases of the highly-contagious Delta variant, especially among unvaccinated young people. Images of large groups of youths gathering on Barcelona’s beaches or in popular nightlife districts have become common since Spain lifted a nationwide night-time curfew in early May. The court did however keep in place for one more week a ban on public or private gatherings of more than 10 people throughout Catalonia.

Like the rest of Spain, the region which is popular with tourists has seen its number of infections drop in recent weeks. When Catalonia imposed the curfew in mid-July it had an infection rate double Spain’s national average, with more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 days. But on Wednesday that figure had fallen to 328, lower than the national average of 378, according to the health ministry’s latest figures.

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Game of chicken alright. People keep telling me they think vacciation rate here is 10% or so, gov’t says over 60%.

So they threaten them with poverty and exclusion. And many Greeks say: Bring it! We’ve seen hard times before!

Greek Gov’t Not Backing Down On Health Worker Vaccinations (K.)

Deputy Health Minister Vassilis Kontozamanis insisted on Thursday there is no room for postponements, either official or informal, of the suspension of health workers who refuse to get vaccinated. “All of society is grateful and we appreciate the work of our health workers and the results so far in managing the pandemic. And we are optimistic that the small percentage of unvaccinated health workers will get their shots by the deadline,” said Kontazamanis. His announcement came 12 days before the expiration of the deadline given to hospital staff and workers at health facilities around the country to get inoculated with at least one dose of the vaccine. “For those who are not vaccinated, I want to be clear and unequivocal that the law will be implemented. The Greek Parliament has legislated… and the obligation of the state to implement the law is self-evident,” he said.

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ha ha ha

US Promises Not To Charge Americans To Fly Out Of Afghanistan (RT)

Americans looking to leave Afghanistan first have to promise to repay the government for the cost of their evacuations to the tune of “$2,000 or more per person,” but the State Department says it will waive the fee. It is estimated anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 American citizens, permanent residents and their family members may still be in Afghanistan, and presumably hoping to leave the country – under Taliban control since Sunday – via Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul before the end of August. Before they brave Taliban checkpoints and hope to get a seat on a US troop transport or chartered civilian jet, however, they must promise to repay the US government for the privilege of their rescue.

One journalist did some digging and found the website of the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), a State Department partnership with the “corporate, non-profit, academic, and faith-based groups.” OSAC’s security alert for Afghanistan, posted on August 14 – the very day the Taliban took over Kabul from the disintegrating US-backed government – clearly states that “repatriation flights are not free.” Passengers “will be required to sign a promissory loan agreement & may not be eligible to renew their US passports til the loan is repaid,” the advisory says, adding that the cost “may be $2,000 or more per person.”


The promissory note is apparently demanded in the Repatriation Assistance Request form, which is required for every single person hoping to get onto an evacuation flight, according to instructions sent out by the US embassy in Kabul – now operating out of HKIA. Anyone hoping to leave will need to fill out the form and wait for the embassy email, before braving Taliban checkpoints to reach the airport, at which point they will have to hope a seat will be found for them on a departing plane on a first-come, first-served basis. Hand luggage only, no pets allowed.

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They left behind over 2,000 U.S.-made armored vehicles, between 30 and 40 aircraft, and enough weaponry to start an army from scratch.

France started preparing an evacuation in April, and executing it in June. Everybody knew.

But rumors have it that some 15,000 Americans are still there. Once they start dying or being taken hostage, Biden’s problems go up by an order of magnitude.

Biden State Dept Halted A Trump-Era ‘Crisis Response’ Plan 2 Months Ago (NP)

Joe Biden’s State Department moved to cancel a critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal. The “Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau” – which was designed to handle medical, diplomatic, and logistical support concerning Americans overseas was paused by Antony Blinken’s State Department earlier this year. Notification was officially signed just months before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. “SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED,” an official State Department document from the Biden State Department begins, before outlining the following move the quash the Trump-era funding for the new bureau.

The document is from the desk of Deputy Secretary of State Brian P. McKeon, confirmed in March by the United States Senate. The document is dated June 11, 2021, though The National Pulse understands the decision to pause the program may have come as early as February, both undermining the original Trump-era date for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and certainly giving the Taliban time to threaten American assets and lives on the run up to Joe Biden’s September 11th date of withdrawal. The subject line reads: “(SBU) Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau,” and the body of the document recommends: “That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), and direct a further review of certain associated Department requirements and capabilities.”

It goes on: “That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, CCR, consistent with the applicable legal requirements, necessary stakeholder engagement, and any applicable changes to the Foreign Affairs Manual and other requirements.” The document reveals the recommendations were approved on June 11th 2021. Speaking exclusively to The National Pulse, former President Donald J. Trump blasted Biden’s irresponsible move: “My Administration prioritized keeping Americans safe, Biden leaves them behind. Canceling this successful Trump Administration program before the withdrawal that would have helped tens of thousands Americans reach home is beyond disgraceful. Our withdrawal was conditions-based and perfect, it would have been flawlessly executed and nobody would have even known we left. The Biden execution and withdrawal is perhaps the greatest embarrassment to our Country in History, both as a military and humanitarian operation.”

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It’s not that they didn’t know.

Leaked State Department Memo Warned Of Afghanistan Collapse (ZH)

Around two dozen State Department officials at the US embassy in Kabul warned of a potential collapse following the Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing a ‘person familiar with the cable.’ Using a special ‘dissent channel’ within the State Department, the cable – sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and another top State Department official – warned of ‘rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces,’ and offered suggestions on how to speed up evacuation and mitigate the obvious crisis slated to ensue, two people told the WSJ. In total, 23 US Embassy staffers – all Americans, signed the July 13 cable, which was given a rush status ‘given the circumstances on the ground in Kabul.’ In addition to Blinken, it was sent to the Director of Policy Planning, Salman Ahmad.

Blinken received the cable and reviewed it shortly afterwards according to the report. The cable, dated July 13, also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban, one of the people said. The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it. -WSJ According to the report, some 18,000 Afghans and their families who had applied for special US Immigrant Visas remained in Kabul in areas under Taliban control, while efforts to reach the airport have become increasingly difficult.

US intelligence officials have sparred with the White House over who was warning of what, and when. And as the Journal notes, the existence of this confidential State Department memo warning of impending doom adds a crucial piece to our knowledge of how this all went down. Why Blinken and Biden didn’t take immediate action despite receiving a ‘dissent channel’ emergency communication from their staff on the ground in Kabul is unknown, however Blinken is apparently so bad that John McCain called him “dangerous to America” in a 2014 Senate speech, adding that he was “one of the worst selections of a very bad lot” as Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State.

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“We are dependent on the beneficence of a theocratic militia that has demonstrated no capacity for mercy. And the U.S. government has no intention of remedying this condition.”

The Worst Presidential Dereliction in Memory (Noah Rothman)

Gen. Mark Milley is right. “There’ll be plenty of time to do AARs,” or after-action reports, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a Wednesday press conference alongside Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin. There will be time to learn why neither he nor “anyone else” anticipated the collapse of the Afghan “army and this government in 11 days.” We will one day have the luxury of looking back on this crisis to determine what led to the evacuation of the military before civilians and the surrender of versatile Afghan-based control points. Right now, a crisis of almost unprecedented proportions is upon us. And to judge from what Austin and Milley are telling us, they have neither the means nor the will to resolve it.

As the Washington Post reported on Tuesday night, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens are still in Afghanistan, and there was “no plan to evacuate the Americans who are outside Kabul.” And there still isn’t. In a most dispiriting display of resignation, Austin and Milley explained that the hellish circumstances to which they’d consigned American citizens and their allies in Afghanistan were all but irresolvable. While thousands of Americans and allied Afghans have been evacuated since Tuesday, we are at the mercy of the Taliban who have surrounded Kabul’s single-runway airport—the only means by which allied nations can evacuate their people. But you have to make it to the airport on your own and by whatever means possible. If you are not presently in U.S. custody in the airport—even inside Kabul—there is little the American military can do for you.

“We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Sec. Austin confessed. Indeed, the U.S. military cannot even mount the kind of rescue operations in which British and French special forces are already engaged. “I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul,” Austin added. What’s more, there are no plans to address that deficiency. “We know that we got to have the right mix of capabilities on the ground,” Austin insisted. “We don’t want to put excessive materials on the ground that are not relevant to what we’re doing.” According to the Pentagon chief, our powerlessness in the face of a disorganized militia is by design.

We have placed the fate of untold thousands of Americans and our Afghan allies in the hands of the Taliban. They dictate the terms and tempo of our operations. We depend on the Taliban to allow foreign nationals and credentialed Afghans into Hamid Karzai International Airport. According to what remains of the American diplomatic presence in Kabul, “the United States government cannot ensure safe passage” into the airport. We are dependent on the beneficence of a theocratic militia that has demonstrated no capacity for mercy. And the U.S. government has no intention of remedying this condition.

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Some good background articles.

The Ides of August (Sarah Chayes)

I covered the fall of the Taliban for NPR, making my way into their former capital, Kandahar, in December 2001, a few days after the collapse of their regime. Descending the last great hill into the desert city, I saw a dusty ghost town. Pickup trucks with rocket-launchers strapped to the struts patrolled the streets. People pulled on my militia friends’ sleeves, telling them where to find a Taliban weapons cache, or a last hold-out. But most remained indoors. It was Ramadan. A few days later, at the holiday ending the month-long fast, the pent-up joy erupted. Kites took to the air. Horsemen on gorgeous, caparisoned chargers tore across a dusty common in sprint after sprint, with a festive audience cheering them on. This was Kandahar, the Taliban heartland. There was no panicked rush for the airport.

I reported for a month or so, then passed off to Steve Inskeep, now Morning Edition host. Within another couple of months, I was back, not as a reporter this time, but to try actually to do something. I stayed for a decade. I ran two non-profits in Kandahar, living in an ordinary house and speaking Pashtu, and eventually went to work for two commanders of the international troops, and then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (You can read about that time, and its lessons, in my first two books, The Punishment of Virtue and Thieves of State.) From that standpoint — speaking as an American, as an adoptive Kandahari, and as a former senior U.S. government official — here are the key factors I see in today’s climax of a two-decade long fiasco:

Afghan government corruption, and the U.S. role enabling and reinforcing it. The last speaker of the Afghan parliament, Rahman Rahmani, I recently learned, is a multimillionaire, thanks to monopoly contracts to provide fuel and security to U.S. forces at their main base, Bagram. Is this the type of government people are likely to risk their lives to defend? Two decades ago, young people in Kandahar were telling me how the proxy militias American forces had armed and provided with U.S. fatigues were shaking them down at checkpoints. By 2007, delegations of elders would visit me — the only American whose door was open and who spoke Pashtu so there would be no intermediaries to distort or report their words.

Over candied almonds and glasses of green tea, they would get to some version of this: “The Taliban hit us on this cheek, and the government hits us on that cheek.” The old man serving as the group’s spokesman would physically smack himself in the face. I and too many other people to count spent years of our lives trying to convince U.S. decision-makers that Afghans could not be expected to take risks on behalf of a government that was as hostile to their interests as the Taliban were. Note: it took me a while, and plenty of my own mistakes, to come to that realization. But I did.

For two decades, American leadership on the ground and in Washington proved unable to take in this simple message. I finally stopped trying to get it across when, in 2011, an interagency process reached the decision that the U.S. would not address corruption in Afghanistan. It was now explicit policy to ignore one of the two factors that would determine the fate of all our efforts. That’s when I knew today was inevitable. Americans like to think of ourselves as having valiantly tried to bring democracy to Afghanistan. Afghans, so the narrative goes, just weren’t ready for it, or didn’t care enough about democracy to bother defending it. Or we’ll repeat the cliche that Afghans have always rejected foreign intervention; we’re just the latest in a long line. I was there. Afghans did not reject us. They looked to us as exemplars of democracy and the rule of law. They thought that’s what we stood for.

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‘Assabiya’ is the engine of history. With it, the most primitive tribe can overturn the mightiest of civilizations; without it, a people will wither in the desert.”

Assabiya Wins Every Time (Lee Smith)

[..] military strategists, political pundits, foreign correspondents, and even historians will spend the next several decades wondering how a gang of rough Pashtun tribesmen galvanized by a fundamentalist version of Islam managed to defeat the most advanced military in the world. And that’s precisely the point: The problem with the American establishment is not simply that after 20 years in Afghanistan it did not understand the country or foresee what its opponents were likely to do after withdrawing forces. More importantly, our ruling class is so alienated from its own roots that it no longer understands the character of the country it purports to lead, and what makes it different, even exceptional.

The evidence is that our elites sought to graft the effects of a civilization built by and for its own people—democracy, a military and police force, girls’ schools, etc.—onto a primitive society that had to be bribed to accept what we were offering. There is no mystery about why the U.S. experience in Afghanistan ended in failure, embarrassment, and scandal. Nor is it a mystery why the Taliban took over Kabul so quickly. They were fighting for primacy. Their victory was foreordained. The medieval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun explains the dynamic in his 14th-century masterwork, Al Muqaddima. History, he shows, is a repetition of the same pattern seen throughout the ages—a group of nomadic tribesmen overturn an existing sedentary culture, a civilization that has become weak and luxurious.

What drives the success of the rising tribe is its group solidarity, or assabiya. Its awareness of itself as a coherent people with a drive for primacy is frequently augmented by religious ideology. The stronger the tribe’s assabiya, the stronger the group. Assimilating the conquered by imposing its will and worldview on them, the victor lays the foundations of a new civilization. But since, as Ibn Khaldun writes, “the goal of civilization is sedentary culture and luxury,” all groups carry the seeds of their own demise. And so the struggle begins anew.

Ibn Khaldun’s most important contribution to political theory was to show that assabiya is the engine of history. With it, the most primitive tribe can overturn the mightiest of civilizations; without it, a people will wither in the desert. As an Arab, and one who claimed as an ancestor a companion of the prophet of Islam, it was natural that his main focus was the physical and spiritual environment of the Bedouin. It was the harsh desert conditions that bred the Bedouin tribes and the ideological conviction, Islam, that bound them together, and which gave rise to the Arab empire, at its height one of the largest in world history. “Since desert life no doubt is the source of bravery, savage groups are braver than others,” he wrote. “They are, therefore, better able to achieve superiority and to take away the things that are in the hands of other nations.”

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Robert Malone: “OK – this video has a super powerful message and a lot of it rings true. I don’t agree with all of it – but it is worth watching and thinking hard about. Detangling the hyperbole from just how bad things actually are – is difficult now for me.”

THE NARRATIVE IS CRUMBLING. SOMETHING BAD AND BIG IS GOING ON.

 

 

 

 

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Aug 192021
 


Henri Matisse View of Nôtre Dame 1914

 

Early Covid-19 Therapy Significantly Improved Covid-19 Outcomes (SD)
Up To 100 May Already Be Infected In New Zealand Covid Outbreak (G.)
Jabbed Adults Infected With Delta ‘Can Match Virus Levels Of Unvaccinated’ (G.)
Get Ready for a Nationwide Eldercare Shortage (CTH)
Former Purdue Pharma Chair Denies Responsibility For US Opioid Crisis (AP)
How Americans View Government Restriction Of False Information (Pew)
New US Air Force Secretary Wants To “Scare” China (Antiwar)
Fire The Military And Intelligence Bigs Who Bungled Afghanistan – Now (NYP)
We Failed Afghanistan, Not the Other Way Around (Taibbi)
IMF Suspends Afghanistan’s Access To Resources (Hill)
Taliban To Reap $1 Trillion Mineral Wealth (DW)

 

 

 

 

Polysaccharides may work. I think I like the illustration.

 

 

Science Direct is an Elsevier publication. We’re getting serious. The shift is slow but real.

Early Covid-19 Therapy Significantly Improved Covid-19 Outcomes (SD)

In a prospective observational study (pre-AndroCoV Trial), the use of nitazoxanide, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine demonstrated unexpected improvements in COVID-19 outcomes when compared to untreated patients. The apparent yet likely positive results raised ethical concerns on the employment of further full placebo controlled studies in early-stage COVID-19. The present analysis aimed to elucidate, through a comparative analysis with two control groups, whether full placebo-control randomized clinical trials (RCTs) on early-stage COVID-19 are still ethically acceptable. The Active group (AG) consisted of patients enrolled in the Pre-AndroCoV-Trial (n = 585). Control Group 1 (CG1) consisted of a retrospectively obtained group of untreated patients of the same population (n = 137), and Control Group 2 (CG2) resulted from a precise prediction of clinical outcomes based on a thorough and structured review of indexed articles and official statements.


Patients were matched for sex, age, comorbidities and disease severity at baseline. Compared to CG1 and CG2, AG showed reduction of 31.5–36.5% in viral shedding (p < 0.0001), 70–85% in disease duration (p < 0.0001), and 100% in respiratory complications, hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, deaths and post-COVID manifestations (p < 0.0001 for all). For every 1000 confirmed cases for COVID-19, at least 70 hospitalizations, 50 mechanical ventilations and five deaths were prevented. Benefits from the combination of early COVID-19 detection and early pharmacological approaches were consistent and overwhelming when compared to untreated groups, which, together with the well-established safety profile of the drug combinations tested in the Pre-AndroCoV Trial, precluded our study from continuing employing full placebo in early COVID-19.

[..] Drugs offered included azithromycin 500mg daily for five days for all patients, in association with one of the following: hydroxychloroquine 400mg daily for five days, nitazoxanide 500mg twice a day for six days, or ivermectin 0.2mg/kg/day in a single daily dose for three days, In addition, repurposed drugs, including dutasteride 0.5mg/day for 15 days and spironolactone 100mg twice a day for 15 days, were optionally offered. Vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, apibaxan, rivaroxaban, enoxaparin and glucocorticoids were added according to clinical judgement, the risk for thrombosis and progression of the disease to the inflammatory stage. Patients that decided to adhere to any treatment were included in the AG. All patients of AG and CG1 groups were followed longitudinally for 90 days for the occurrence of a new-onset or persistence of physical or mental manifestations.

Of the 585 subjects, all patients used azithromycin. A total of 357 patients used NIT, 159 used HCQ and 110 patients used IVE, alone with azithromycin or in combination with other drugs. Of the 357 patients that used NIT, 69 used the same in combination with HCQ, 46 used in combination with IVE, 146 used in combination with SPIRO, and 27 males used in combination with DUTA. Of the 110 patients that used IVE, 22 used in combination with HCQ, 82 used in combination with NIT, 66 used in combination with SPIRO and four males used in combination with DUTA. Of the 159 patients that used HCQ, 21 used in combination with IVE, 113 used in combination with NIT, 86 used in combination with SPIRO and seven males used in combination with DUTA.

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Not one word on how severe their cases are. Typical.

Up To 100 May Already Be Infected In New Zealand Covid Outbreak (G.)

New Zealand’s coronavirus cluster has grown to 21, with a strong link discovered to a case at the border, as the country began day two of a national lockdown. On Thursday, New Zealand reported another 11 cases of the Delta variant in the community, all in Auckland. The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, also announced that children between the ages of 12-15 would now also be eligible for the vaccine, from 1 September. “My message to parents who will need to of course provide consent for the children, is that I would not have been a part of a process and approving this, unless I believed it was safe, because around that table, we are parents too, all affected by these decisions, so we take them very seriously,” she said. The first case, a 58-year-old man from Auckland, emerged on Tuesday, prompting the government to put the entire country into a level 4 lockdown – the highest level of restrictions.

Ardern said genome sequencing has linked the cluster to a returnee from Australia. A New Zealander returned from Sydney on a managed red-zone flight and tested positive for the Delta variant on 7 August before being moved to quarantine the next day. After becoming unwell, they were transferred to Middlemore hospital, on 16 August. “This is a significant development and means now we can be fairly certain how, and when, the virus entered the country, and that based on timelines, there are minimal, possibly only one, or maybe two, missing links between this returnee and cases in our current outbreak,” Ardern said. The period in which cases were in the community is relatively short, she said, adding that it was unlikely the virus was spread at the hospital because the case was transferred there just one day prior to the first positive local case being discovered.

Ardern thanked the 58-year-old man for getting tested when he did. “If it wasn’t for you getting tested when you did, this could be a much, much more difficult situation. Having said that, I know we’re all prepared for cases to get worse before they get better. There is always a pattern with these outbreaks.” The prime minister cautioned that the country would need to remain open to other possibilities, but that the new information gives officials the confidence to focus on how the virus was transmitted, with a particular focus on the isolation and quarantine facilities. “Today we believe we have uncovered the piece of the puzzle we were looking for, and that means our ability to circle the virus, lock it down and stamp it out generally has greatly improved.”

Read more …

In real life, we’ve seen levels of 4-5 times higher (get me a booster!). But the Guardian brings it to you gently.

And stupidly: “But the fact that they can have high levels of virus suggests that people who aren’t yet vaccinated may not be as protected from the Delta variant as we hoped.”

Jabbed Adults Infected With Delta ‘Can Match Virus Levels Of Unvaccinated’ (G.)

Fully vaccinated adults can harbour virus levels as high as unvaccinated people if infected with the Delta variant, according to a sweeping analysis of UK data, which supports the idea that hitting the threshold for herd immunity is unlikely. There is abundant evidence that Covid vaccines in the UK continue to offer significant protection against hospitalisations and death. But this new analysis shows that although being fully vaccinated means the risk of getting infected is lower, once infected by Delta a person can carry similar virus levels as unvaccinated people. The implications of this on transmission remain unclear, the researchers have cautioned.

“We don’t yet know how much transmission can happen from people who get Covid-19 after being vaccinated – for example, they may have high levels of virus for shorter periods of time,” said Sarah Walker, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Oxford. “But the fact that they can have high levels of virus suggests that people who aren’t yet vaccinated may not be as protected from the Delta variant as we hoped.” Positive tests, hospitalisations and deaths linked to Covid have been rising slowly in the UK recently. In the week to 18 August, 211,238 people had a confirmed positive test result, an increase of 7.6% compared with the previous seven days. Over the same period, there have been 655 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, a rise of 7.9% versus the previous seven days.

Hospitalisations have also risen slightly, with 5,623 going into hospital with coronavirus between 8 August 2021 and 14 August 2021, a rise of 4.3% compared with the previous seven days. The study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, found vaccine performance has waned against Delta versus the previously dominant Alpha variant. The analysis did not directly investigate whether the lower level of vaccine protection against Delta affected jabs’ ability to prevent severe disease. However, Dr Penny Ward, a visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London, noted: “The low incidence of hospitalisation seen to date suggests that in this respect at least the vaccines are protecting individuals from developing severe Covid.”

Read more …

“.. as Biden Forces Mandatory Vaccines For Any Worker Paid by Medicare and Medicaid Money..”

Get Ready for a Nationwide Eldercare Shortage (CTH)

…As predicted, and the ‘next step’ will be colleges, universities, students and anyone receiving federal education funding, loans or grants. Today, the White House occupant announced a federal regulatory requirement that all nurses and healthcare workers who work in facilities funded by Medicaid and/or Medicare will be required to be vaccinated. Ironically Joe Biden noted that nurses, those professionally trained in healthcare systems – who understand the issues of vaccination, are at a lower vaccination rate than the less trained and educated population. “Vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country“, Biden said; while never questioning ‘why’. As pointed out recently, a large subset of the vaccine resistant population are the most educated.


[Speech Transcript] – […] “Today, I’m announcing a new step. If you work in a nursing home and serve people on Medicare or Medicaid, you will also be required to get vaccinated. More than 130,000 residents in nursing homes have sa- — have sadly, over the period of this virus, passed away. At the same time, vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country.” The downstream consequence from this action will be a shortage of healthcare providers in nursing homes. This has already become an issue for hospitals coast to coast who require vaccinations of their staff. CTH has been warning about the Chicago network behind Biden and their objective. We have accurately predicted their moves, but what we cannot determine is how the larger American electorate will respond to these encroachments.

Read more …

As go the Sacklers, so goes Pfizer.

Former Purdue Pharma Chair Denies Responsibility For US Opioid Crisis (AP)

The former president and board chair of Purdue Pharma told a court Wednesday that he, his family and the company are not responsible for the opioid crisis in the United States. Richard Sackler, a member of the family who owns the company, was asked whether each bears responsibility during a federal bankruptcy hearing in White Plains, New York, over whether a judge should accept the OxyContin maker’s plan to settle thousands of lawsuits. For each, he gave a one-word answer: “No.” Richard Sackler’s denial of responsibility for the opioid crisis comes a day after another Sackler family member said the group wouldn’t accept a settlement without guarantees of immunity from further legal action.

The previous words of Richard Sackler, now 76, are at the heart of lawsuits accusing the Stamford, Connecticut-based company of an outsized role in sparking a nationwide opioid epidemic. In the 1996 event to launch sales of OxyContin, he told the company’s sales force that there would be “a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition”. Five years later, as it was apparent that the powerful prescription pain drug was being misused in some cases, he said in an email that Purdue would have to “hammer on the abusers in every way possible”, describing them as “the culprits and the problem”. For those reasons, the activists crusading against companies involved in selling opioids often see Richard Sackler – who was president of the company from 1999 to 2003, chair of its board from 2004 through 2007, and a board member from 1990 until 2018 – as a prime villain.

[..] Sackler, whose father was one of three brothers who nearly 70 years ago bought the company that later became Purdue Pharma, didn’t recall emails he wrote a decade or more ago; whether Purdue’s board approved certain sales strategies; whether a company owned by Sackler family members sold opioids in Argentina; or whether he paid any of his own money as part of a settlement with Oklahoma to which the Sackler family contributed $75m. Often, he answered questions with more questions, asking for precision. When Edmunds asked him if he knew how many people in the US had died from using opioids, Sackler asked him to specify over which time period. Edmunds did: 2005 to 2017. “I don’t know,” Sackler said. He said that he had looked at some data on deaths in the past, though. (The US Centers for Disease Control has tallied more than 500,000 deaths in the US to opioid overdose, including both prescription drugs and illicit ones such as heroin and illegally produced fentanyl, since 2000.)

Read more …

How did that country get so scary so fast?

And how can a government or Big Tech restrict false information when they are the biggest source of it? You know, just in theory …..

How Americans View Government Restriction Of False Information (Pew)

Amid rising concerns over misinformation online – including surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, especially vaccines – Americans are now a bit more open to the idea of the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online. And a majority of the public continues to favor technology companies taking such action, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Roughly half of U.S. adults (48%) now say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means losing some freedom to access and publish content, according to the survey of 11,178 adults conducted July 26-Aug. 8, 2021. That is up from 39% in 2018. At the same time, the share of adults who say freedom of information should be protected – even if it means some misinformation is published online – has decreased from 58% to 50%.

When it comes to whether technology companies should take steps to address misinformation online, more are in agreement. A majority of adults (59%) continue to say technology companies should take steps to restrict misinformation online, even if it puts some restrictions on Americans’ ability to access and publish content. Around four-in-ten (39%) take the opposite view that protecting freedom of information should take precedence, even if it means false claims can spread. The balance of opinion on this question has changed little since 2018. Partisan divisions on the role of government in addressing online misinformation have emerged since 2018. Three years ago, around six-in-ten in each partisan coalition – 60% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents and 57% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – agreed that freedom of information should be prioritized over the government taking steps to restrict false information online.


Today, 70% of Republicans say those freedoms should be protected, even it if means some false information is published. Nearly as many Democrats (65%) instead say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means limiting freedom of information. Partisan views on whether technology companies should take such steps have also grown further apart. Roughly three-quarters of Democrats (76%) now say tech companies should take steps to restrict false information online, even at the risk of limiting information freedoms. A majority of Republicans (61%) express the opposite view – that those freedoms should be protected, even if it means false information can be published online. In 2018, the parties were closer together on this question, though most Democrats still supported action by tech firms.

Read more …

Washington hasn’t processed its defeat yet.

New US Air Force Secretary Wants To “Scare” China (Antiwar)

Researching and developing new weapons technologies is a key part of the Pentagon’s strategy to counter China. In an interview with Defense News, President Biden’s new Air Force secretary said he’d like to see the US military field the type of new technologies that “scare China.” Frank Kendall, who was sworn in as Air Force secretary on July 28th, made it clear in the interview that he is focused on China. “I’ve been obsessed, if you will, with China for quite a long time now — and its military modernization, what that implies for the US and for security,” he said. Hyping up the threat of China’s military serves the Pentagon to justify more spending, and Kendall hinted that he believes the Air Force doesn’t have a sufficient budget. “The Air Force has been overly constrained,” he said.


“I think we’ve not been allowed to do things we really need to do to free up resources for things that are higher priority. We’ve had a very hard time getting the Congress to allow us to retire older aircraft.” One project that Kendall discussed is the B-21 bomber, which is currently being developed. “I think that’s going to be something that will be intimidating, it’s going to be very capable. And there are a few others like that that are coming down the pipeline. … But I think we have to be continuously thinking about other things that will be intimidating to our future enemies.” The Pentagon budget requested by President Biden prioritized spending on new weapons technology. The budget request asked for over $112 billion for research, development, testing, and evaluation, known as RDT&E. Besides new long-range bombers, US military leaders are calling for investment in technology like artificial intelligence, robotics, space and cyber capabilities, and hypersonic missiles.

Read more …

And then you will have what?

Fire The Military And Intelligence Bigs Who Bungled Afghanistan – Now (NYP)

This is the biggest foreign failure in most Americans’ lifetimes, and there needs to be an accounting. The normal course of business after government bungling nowadays is that everyone involved tut-tuts a bit, then gets a raise and a promotion, while the government goes back to business as usual. But in a sane nation, failure would be punished. To begin with, Milley must resign or be fired. And the same for our triple-masking defense secretary, Lloyd Austin. This was a failure that happened on their watch, and it happened through bad management. We could have pulled out without nearly the level of chaos, confusion and terror.

But Milley and Austin weren’t on top of their jobs. They may feel that firing is unfair, but they’d be getting off light by the standards of military history: In the 18th century, the British executed an admiral, John Byng, for failing to “do his utmost” in combat. It was harsh, but the Royal Navy became more aggressive. Likewise, the intel agencies and officers who provided the bad, er, intelligence need to go. Many others who failed, from contractors to lower-level officers and bureaucrats, need to go, too. You punish a bureaucracy by shrinking its staff and cutting its budget. That needs to happen here. The brass and agencies will complain that it was Biden who ultimately made the call. Indeed, they are already furiously leaking to that effect to the press.

Maybe they’re right. But it’s up to voters to fire the president at the ballot box. If they thought what Biden planned was disastrous, they should have resigned in protest. But they didn’t. Meanwhile, we also need a probe, with independent investigators with strong powers. That should be followed by deep structural changes in a military that hasn’t really won a war since well before I was born. Bottom line: Our military must be disciplined to win wars, rather than promote gender ideology and postmodern race theories (at home or abroad). None of this will transpire, of course. Our society is run by a technocratic-managerial class that never pays a price for failure. Democracy is a glossy finish over an unelected administrative state that isn’t really accountable to anyone and measures success or failure in terms of budgets, p.r. and power, not results.

Read more …

$300 million per day for 20 years.

We Failed Afghanistan, Not the Other Way Around (Taibbi)

On MSNBC the other night, Rachel Maddow told a story about visiting Afghanistan a decade ago. She described being taken on a tour of a new neighborhood in Kabul of “narco-palaces,” what she called, “big garish, gigantic, rococo, strange-looking places” that hadn’t existed before the Americans arrived. This was said to be symbolic of the “fantastically corrupt elites” among the Afghan political class who put themselves into position to siphon off big chunks of the “billions of dollars per month” we sent into the country. Noting that, “the U.S. effort and expenditure in that country did build some stuff, roads and waterways and schools,” Maddow decried the fact that “so much of what we put in by the boatload was shoveled off by a fantastically corrupt elite.”

She showed video of Taliban conquerors lounging around in the tackily furnished homes of former Afghan officials in Kabul, pointing out that, “dictator chic is the same the world over.” In a not-so-subtle dig at Donald Trump, she added, “And they really like gold fixtures.” From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, the pattern of American officials showering questionable political allies abroad with armfuls of cash is a long-established practice. However, the idea that this is the reason the “missions” fail in such places is just a continuation of the original propaganda lines that get us into these messes. It’s a way of saying the subject populations are to blame for undermining our noble efforts, when the missions themselves are often preposterous and, moreover, the lion’s share of the looting is usually done by our own marauding contracting community.

It’s bad enough that Maddow/MSNBC played a big part in delaying the withdrawal last year with hype of the bogus Bountygate story, which gave one last (false) dying breath to the war rationale. This latest criticism of theirs ignores the massive amounts of corruption that were endemic to the American side of the mission. Contractors made fortunes monstrously overcharging the taxpayer for everything from private security, to dysfunctional or unnecessary construction projects, to social programs that either had no chance for success, or for which metrics for measuring success didn’t exist. The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) some years ago identified “$15.5 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse… in our published reports and closed investigations between SIGAR’s inception in 2008 and December 31, 2017,” and added an additional $3.4 billion in a subsequent review.

All told, “SIGAR reviewed approximately $63 billion and concluded that a total of approximately $19 billion or 30 percent of the amount reviewed was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse.” Thirty percent! If the overall cost of the war was, as reported, $2 trillion (about $300 million per day for 20 years), a crude back of the envelope calculation for the amount lost to fraud during the entire period might be $600 billion, an awesome sum. It could even be worse than that. SIGAR for instance also looked at a $7.8 billion sum spent on buildings and vehicles from 2008 on, and reported that of that, only $343.2 million worth “were maintained in good condition.” They added that just $1.2 billion of the original expenditure was used as intended. By that metric, the majority of the monies spent in Afghanistan might simply have gone up in smoke in bogus or ineffectual contracting schemes.

Read more …

Either the IMF distances itself from the US, or it becomes irrelevant.

IMF Suspends Afghanistan’s Access To Resources (Hill)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday announced it was suspending Afghanistan’s access to its resources due to what it called a “lack of clarity” surrounding the recognition of the country’s government after the Taliban took control of the capital city of Kabul. “As is always the case, the IMF is guided by the views of the international community,” a spokesperson for the IMF said in a statement, according to Reuters. “There is currently a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government in Afghanistan, as a consequence of which the country cannot access SDRs or other IMF resources.” This move by the IMF comes after the Biden administration reportedly froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. banks, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions in funds.

“Any Central Bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban,” one administration official told The Washington Post. It is currently unclear whether the Taliban will be recognized by the international community, though China has indicated that it is open to establishing formal relations, being one of the few countries that did not evacuate its embassy when the Afghan government fell. Shortly after the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if the U.S. would ever recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government. “A future Afghan government that upholds the basic rights of its people and that doesn’t harbor terrorists is a government we can work with and recognize,” Blinken said.

“Conversely, a government that doesn’t do that, that doesn’t uphold the basic rights of its people, including women and girls, that harbors terrorist groups that have designs on the United States, our allies and partners, certainly, that’s not going to happen,” he added.

Read more …

No boycott possible. There will always be customers.

Taliban To Reap $1 Trillion Mineral Wealth (DW)

The Taliban have been handed a huge financial and geopolitical edge in relations with the world’s biggest powers as the militant group seizes control of Afghanistan for a second time. In 2010, a report by US military experts and geologists estimated that Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, was sitting on nearly $1 trillion (€850 billion) in mineral wealth, thanks to huge iron, copper, lithium, cobalt and rare-earth deposits. In the subsequent decade, most of those resources remained untouched due to ongoing violence in the country. Meanwhile, the value of many of those minerals has skyrocketed, sparked by the global transition to green energy. A follow-up report by the Afghan government in 2017 estimated that Kabul’s new mineral wealth may be as high as $3 trillion, including fossil fuels.


Lithium, which is used in batteries for electric cars, smartphones and laptops, is facing unprecedented demand, with annual growth of 20% compared to just 5-6% a few years ago. The Pentagon memo called Afghanistan the Saudi Arabia of lithium and projected that the country’s lithium deposits could equal Bolivia’s — one of the world’s largest. Copper, too, is benefiting from the post-COVID global economic recovery — up 43% over the past year. More than a quarter of Afghanistan’s future mineral wealth could be realized by expanding copper mining activities. While the West has threatened not to work with the Taliban after it effectively seized control of Kabul over the weekend, China, Russia and Pakistan are lining up to do business with the militant group — further adding to the US and Europe’s humiliation over the fall of the country.

As the manufacturer of almost half of the world’s industrial goods, China is stoking much of the global demand for commodities. Beijing — already Afghanistan’s largest foreign investor — is seen as likely to lead the race to help the country build an efficient mining system to meet its insatiable needs for minerals. “Taliban control comes at a time when there is a supply crunch for these minerals for the foreseeable future and China needs them,” Michael Tanchum, a senior fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, told DW. “China is already in position in Afghanistan to mine these minerals.”


One of the Asian powerhouse’s mining giants, the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC), already has a 30-year lease to mine copper in Afghanistan’s barren Logar province. Some analysts, however, question whether the Taliban have the competence and willingness to exploit the country’s natural resources given the income they generate from the drug trade. “These resources were in the ground in the 90s too and they [the Taliban] weren’t able to extract them,” Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, told DW. “One has to remain very skeptical of their ability to grow the Afghan economy or even their interest in doing so.”

Read more …

 

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Aug 152021
 
 August 15, 2021  Posted by at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  119 Responses »


Henri Matisse Luxury, calm and pleasure 1904

 

Taliban Launches Offensive On Kabul (Sp.)
Defining Away Vaccine Safety Signals (Crawford)
Covid-19 Injections Dangerous For Mothers and Babies (Yeadon)
Class Action Lawsuit Says Vaccine Has Killed 45,000 People (Rumble)
Children Born During Pandemic Have Lower IQs (G.)
Well, ****…. (Denninger)
French Study Claims ADE Occurring In Delta Variant Infections (TMN)
Denmark Abolishes All Corona Measures (FFN)
New Covid Variants ‘Will Set Us Back A Year’, Experts Warn UK Government (O.)
Booster Shots Will ‘Be Obligatory For Trips Abroad And Care Home Staff’ (DM)
The Teens Who’d Prefer To Catch Covid Than Have The Vaccine (DM)
I Wish To Take A Little Walk With You And Talk, Deliberately, About This (TLR)

 

 

233

 

 

China will recognize the Taliban. And then build a pipeline.

 

 

Crick

 

 

Killer T cells

 

 

“US intelligence agencies who said just 4 days ago that Kabul could fall in 90 days have revised the figure to 72 hours.”

Taliban Launches Offensive On Kabul (Sp.)

Biden short

The Taliban* has already taken control of all of Afghanistan’s border crossings, leaving the Kabul Airport as the only route out of the country. Taliban insurgents have launched an offensive on Kabul, having surrounded the Afghan capital, the country’s Interior Ministry announced on Sunday. According to the ministry, the terrorists are entering the capital from all sides. The Office of the President of Afghanistan has taken to Twitter to say that the country’s security and defence forces have the situation under control “in coordination with international partners”. The tweet added that gunfire was heard in several remote areas of Kabul. A source told Sputnik that the Taliban had already taken control of Kabul University and raised the group’s flag in one of the city’s districts.

The Associated Press has cited officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to release the information, as saying there hadn’t been any fighting yet. The insurgents are said to be in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh, and Paghman. Less than an hour ago, a member of the negotiating team of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Matin Bek, urged people not to panic and claimed that the Afghan capital was safe. Shortly before the Taliban entered Kabul, the Torkham border crossing with Pakistan, the last post still under the Afghan government’s control, fell to the terrorist group. Thus, the insurgents now control all of Afghanistan’s border crossings. The insurgents took control of the key eastern city of Jalalabad on Sunday, just hours after seizing the northern bastion of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The United States, meanwhile, is sending more troops to the encircled capital to help evacuate its civilians and diplomatic staff as the risk of a Taliban takeover of Kabul became more clear. Earlier this week, US intelligence assessed Kabul could be isolated within 30 days and fall to the Taliban within 90 days.

Read more …

It’s a neat little trick.

Defining Away Vaccine Safety Signals (Crawford)

We get to section 2.3, and this is where things get really crazy. This is where signals (for assessing safety/danger of the vaccines) get defined. Subsection 2.3.1 begins (emphasis mine), “CDC will perform PRR data mining on a weekly basis or as needed. PRRs compare the proportion of a specific AE following a specific vaccine versus the proportion of the same AE following receipt of another vaccine (see equation below Table 4). A safety signal is defined as a PRR of at least 2, chi-squared statistic of at least 4, and 3 or more cases of the AE following receipt of the specific vaccine of interest. ” Only a real dork would emphasize the word ‘and’, right? A logic dork, mind you, but we’ll get to that…

First, note that PRR is the proportional reporting ratio, and these PRR numbers are the outputs of a function defined by the CDC based on four variables (which they list in a table as capital letters, then apply in a function as lower-case letters, which always makes me a little uncomfortable as I rarely see such sloppy transition from definitions to application, and somehow they always seem to come from government documentation where I worry about ass covering and plausible deniability).

Look at the numerator of this formula. The variables a and b are specific to each vaccine. Now, consider what would happen if an extremely dangerous vaccine were introduced that resulted in 20 times as many AEs of all types as all the other vaccines to which it gets compared.

The PRR remains invariant in the scaling of adverse events!

This means that one vaccine that kills and cripples 20 or 50 or 1,000 times as much as a very safe vaccine will show the same PRR (mild adjustments for variables c and d notwithstanding), and no safety signal will be identified by the CDC. By design. In my circle of discussion, I’ve found out (to my dismay) that this definition of PRR has also been used for other vaccines. Just during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, important safety signals have come and gone without notice, such as the MedDRA term “death” showed up as a signal in dispersion analysis in February, but no longer does due to the rising quantity of so many other AEs, which forces structural mean-reversion of the PPR function (toward 1) by inflating the denominator. In other words, the number of an AE, a, is normalized to the total number of adverse events (not the number vaccinated, or doses), the ratio of which is then normalized again to the aggregated totals (fraction c over c + d) from other vaccines.

Read more …

“..there isn’t an aware person who wouldn’t call a halt at this point.”

Covid-19 Injections Dangerous For Mothers and Babies (Yeadon)

The covid-19 vaccines currently subject to emergency use authorisations all share a common and novel feature: they are gene-based products. Instead of containing a small amount of killed or live-attenuated pathogen, they instead comprise genetic code, instructions as it were to manufacture in our own cells a part of the pathogen. In some products, the genetic code is of DNA & use a weakened respiratory virus to ensure delivery to our cells, or of messenger RNA (the intermediate between the DNA of our genes and the protein product thereby manufactured). There is a further commonality: they cause the recipients cells to manufacture a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus called the spike protein. This is literally the spike projecting outwards from the spherical object that contains the virus itself.

As detailed elsewhere in this packet of information, coronavirus spike proteins are biologically active and they initiate the blood coagulation cascade among other properties. It is alleged that it is the induction of blood coagulation in various locations in the body which is responsible for a high proportion of the serious adverse events including deaths which are being reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the USA and in analogous databases elsewhere. The rate of fatal outcomes following covid-19 vaccination, usually from clotting or bleeding disorders, is extraordinary and exceeds that from any previous vaccine by a very large amount, which this reviewer estimates is of the order of 60-fold.

That this astonishingly high rate of adverse events after vaccination is a consequence of two factors: 1. The manufacturers were simply not required to study the way the product moves around the body after injection and 2. They were not required to study the functional effects of the genetic code within the product after administration. There are no products on the mass market which operate in this way. It is my expert opinion that this is the greatest failure of medicinal product regulation in relation to reproductive health since thalidomide and is very much greater in terms of societal impact. It is imperative that all these products be suspended until improved safety testing can determine whether there are any groups in whom the benefits outweigh the risks.

[..] It is essential to lay out the backdrop to the current position with clinical use of covid-19 vaccines, for one reason: we have NEVER, since thalidomide, exposed women of childbearing potential (WOCBP) and ESPECIALLY NEVER pregnant women to ANY novel, experimental pharmaceutical product without that product first having completed a full battery of reproductive toxicology tests. Even after this crucial step, pilot studies are always conducted in a small number of pregnant women to minimise risk to the developing fetus. Neither of these essential steps have been undertaken.

[..] This new data, which shows that women do raise antibodies to a component of their placenta after vaccination with the Pfizer/BioTech product, raises serious concerns for fetal safety. It is not safe to assume that this will not have adverse consequences on successful pregnancy. It is not safe to assume that the other vaccines will not have similar effects. Again, as with the distributional study, a presumption of risk, potentially severe, arises from these clinical observations, and there isn’t an aware person who wouldn’t call a halt at this point.

Read more …

“There are effective treatments. It’s unnecessary to test asymptomatic people because the CDC says that they don’t spread the virus.”

Class Action Lawsuit Says Vaccine Has Killed 45,000 People (Rumble)

Michael Green has filed a class action lawsuit at first representing 1,200 first responders against the Governor & Mayor’s vaccine mandates with thousands more expected to join. Michael Green says that the vaccine is killing people all around the country. There are effective treatments. It’s unnecessary to test asymptomatic people because the CDC says that they don’t spread the virus. Honolulu Fire Captain Kaimi Pelekai gives an emotional testimony about losing his job because he doesn’t want to put this experimental vaccine in his body that is killing people.

Read more …

Mean score drops from 100 to 78.

Children Born During Pandemic Have Lower IQs (G.)

Children born during the coronavirus pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared with children born before, a US study suggests. The first few years of a child’s life are critical to their cognitive development. But with Covid-19 triggering the closure of businesses, nurseries, schools and playgrounds, life for infants changed considerably, with parents stressed and stretched as they tried to balance work and childcare. With limited stimulation at home and less interaction with the world outside, pandemic-era children appear to have scored shockingly low on tests designed to assess cognitive development, said lead study author Sean Deoni, associate professor of paediatrics (research) at Brown University.

In the decade preceding the pandemic, the mean IQ score on standardised tests for children aged between three months and three years of age hovered around 100, but for children born during the pandemic that number tumbled to 78, according to the analysis, which is yet to be peer-reviewed. “It’s not subtle by any stretch,” said Deoni. “You don’t typically see things like that, outside of major cognitive disorders.” The study included 672 children from the state of Rhode Island. Of these, 188 were born after July 2020 and 308 were born prior to January 2019, while 176 were born between January 2019 and March 2020. The children included in the study were born full-term, had no developmental disabilities and were mostly white.

Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fared worse in the tests, the researchers found. The biggest reason behind the falling scores is likely the lack of stimulation and interaction at home, said Deoni. “Parents are stressed and frazzled … that interaction the child would normally get has decreased substantially.” Whether these lower cognitive scores will have a long-term impact is unclear. In the first few years of life, the foundations for cognition are laid, much like building a house – it’s easier to add rooms or flourishes when you’re building the foundation, Deoni said. “The ability to course-correct becomes smaller, the older that child gets.”

Read more …

“In mid-December, before the first person had full vaccinated immunity, cases were falling dramatically in the United States. Herd Immunity. For real. It was over. We had suffered, but, had we not been stupid, Covid was more-or-less finished with us.”

Well, ****…. (Denninger)

“Antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) of infection is a safety concern for vaccine strategies. In a recent publication, Li et al. (Cell 184 :1-17, 2021) have reported that infection-enhancing antibodies directed against the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein facilitate virus infection in vitro, but not in vivo. However, this study was performed with the original Wuhan/D614G strain. Since the Covid-19 pandemic is now dominated with Delta variants, we analyzed the interaction of facilitating antibodies with the NTD of these variants. Using molecular modelling approaches, we show that enhancing antibodies have a higher affinity for Delta variants than for Wuhan/D614G NTDs.

We show that enhancing antibodies reinforce the binding of the spike trimer to the host cell membrane by clamping the NTD to lipid raft microdomains. This stabilizing mechanism may facilitate the conformational change that induces the demasking of the receptor binding domain. As the NTD is also targeted by neutralizing antibodies, our data suggest that the balance between neutralizing and facilitating antibodies in vaccinated individuals is in favor of neutralization for the original Wuhan/D614G strain. However, in the case of the Delta variant, neutralizing antibodies have a decreased affinity for the spike protein, whereas facilitating antibodies display a strikingly increased affinity. Thus, ADE may be a concern for people receiving vaccines based on the original Wuhan strain spike sequence (either mRNA or viral vectors).”

You stupid, stupid bastards….. Coronaviruses have a long history of doing this sort of thing and its one of the reasons we’ve never managed to have a vaccine developed for them before; it simply doesn’t work. But we were sure it wouldn’t happen this time. It had happened all the other times, but not this time. We were so sure we didn’t need to take the several years required to prove it. We’re smart! We have the new technology, never before deployed in man or beast, which we were absolutely certain would evade the risk that had always, in previous trials, derailed attempted vaccines. Oh, and there were also billions of dollars involved for the companies involved and many newly minted billionaires to be, including the NIH itself who holds some of the patents involved.

So here’s what happened. In mid-December, before the first person had full vaccinated immunity, cases were falling dramatically in the United States. Herd Immunity. For real. It was over. We had suffered, but, had we not been stupid, Covid was more-or-less finished with us. Yes, there were and would remain some of us who hadn’t gotten it, and the extremely rare person who could get it a second time, that would continue to get the virus. It was, however, over. But we were stupid. We jabbed a huge percentage of our population. And as has occurred every other time with coronavirus vaccine attempts the virus mutated around the protection and in fact used the vaccine antibodies to enhance infection. Delta is in fact promoted by those who were vaccinated. As with all other Covid variants most people get a mild or no real illness, but some people get hammered.

However, prior infection doesn’t help if you got jabbed since you took a drug that helps the virus attack you. We created a third wave by our own stupidity: Stupidity seen in nation after nation, but only in nations with high vaccine prevalence; Israel, the UK, Iceland and here in the United States. Don’t run the bull**** on me that this isn’t happening: Not only is the science now in on how its happening but Israel and Palestine, two nations literally next door to each with one having near 100% vaccination and the other about 10% could not be more-stark. Palestine is seeing a small uptick in infections while Israel is getting hammered. The “smartest men in the room” screwed not just a nation — bad enough — but an enormously-large part of the world. Including, quite possibly, you. There’s a reason we’ve never attempted to vaccinate against coronaviruses before. THIS IS THE REASON!

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Would new vaccines help? Only until the next one.

French Study Claims ADE Occurring In Delta Variant Infections (TMN)

A new study by French researchers from Aix-Marseille Université has alarmingly found that ADE or antibody dependent enhancement is indeed occurring in infections with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant. The study findings were peer reviewed and published in the Journal of Infections. ADE or antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) of infection is a safety concern for vaccine strategies. A misleading earlier study reported that infection-enhancing antibodies directed against the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein facilitate virus infection in vitro, but not in vivo. This study however was performed with the original Wuhan/D614G strain. Importantly since the COVID-19 pandemic is now dominated with Delta variants, the study team analyzed the interaction of facilitating antibodies with the NTD of these variants.

Utilizing molecular modeling approaches, the team showed that enhancing antibodies have a higher affinity for Delta variants than for Wuhan/D614G NTDs. The study team demonstrated that enhancing antibodies reinforce the binding of the spike trimer to the host cell membrane by clamping the NTD to lipid raft microdomains. This stabilizing mechanism may facilitate the conformational change that induces the de-masking of the receptor binding domain. As the NTD is also targeted by neutralizing antibodies, the study data suggest that the balance between neutralizing and facilitating antibodies in vaccinated individuals is in favor of neutralization for the original Wuhan/D614G strain. Alarmingly, in the case of the Delta variant, neutralizing antibodies have a decreased affinity for the spike protein, whereas facilitating antibodies display a strikingly increased affinity.

Hence antibody dependent enhancement or ADE may be a concern for people receiving vaccines based on the original Wuhan strain spike sequence (either mRNA or viral vectors). Under these circumstances, second generation vaccines with spike protein formulations lacking structurally-conserved ADE-related epitopes should be considered. [..] It should be noted that all current Covid-19 vaccines (either mRNA or viral vectors) are based on the original Wuhan spike sequence. In as much as neutralizing antibodies overwhelm facilitating antibodies, ADE is not a concern. However, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants may tip the scales in favor of infection enhancement. The study’s structural and modeling data suggest that it might be indeed the case for Delta variants. The study team concludes and warns that ADE may occur in individuals receiving vaccines based on the original Wuhan strain spike sequence (either mRNA or viral vectors) and then exposed to a Delta variant.

Read more …

But The Science!

Denmark Abolishes All Corona Measures (FFN)

Danish parliament recently decided in Copenhagen that all Corona measures should be ended from October 1. There will therefore no longer be a mask requirement and the test regime will be abolished. The Danes will then no longer have to provide evidence of whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated, or whether they have tested positive or negative. All Corona measures are being lifted in view of the increasing incidence figures in Denmark, reported RT Deutsch. Since the beginning of July this value has risen from 31 to 107,2 (as of August 8). At the same time, the upper limits of this Corona indicator has increased significantly. At the same time, the incidence limits are increased significantly: In communities from 300 to 500 infected people within seven days, in the districts from 500 to 1000.

However, the prerequisite is that an increasing number of Covid-19 patients does not overload the health care system. Denmark’s SSI infectious diseases agency said it no longer relied on vaccination to achieve herd immunity in the country. Tyra Grove Krause, the SSI’s acting academic director, said a new wave of infections were expected after people return to work and school at the end of this summer, but it should not be cause for alarm. “It will be more reminiscent of the flu,” Krause said. Overall, the current vaccination rate is just under 58,4 percent of fully vaccinated people in Denmark. In Germany, this value is only slightly lower at 54,5 percent (as of August 8) but vaccine advocates have been persistent in their fear-mongering and pressure on the unvaccinated.

Tyrolean lawyer Dr. Renate Holzeisen, meanwhile strongly recommended that all employers refrain from vaccination pressure or compulsory vaccination, because most of them were “obviously not even aware of the far-reaching legal consequences associated with it”. The fact that the so-called Covid-19 vaccines, according to the official approval documents of the EMA and the European Commission were not developed and approved for the prevention of infection with the SARS-COV-2 virus, but solely to prevent a more severe course of the disease, were conditionally approved for this reason alone, Holzeisen underscored.

The official approval documents therefore show that these substances cannot interrupt the chain of infection because the people treated with them can become infected and thus be infectious. Practice also proves that people who are completely “vaccinated” become infected with the virus and even have the same viral load as “unvaccinated people” as the CDC, among others, has admitted. It is therefore clear that any Covid-19 “compulsory vaccination” actually lacks any justification. All pressure, including moral pressure (alleged act of solidarity with one’s neighbor) is therefore illegal in terms of criminal and liability law based on the official approval documents.

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But we knew they were coming?! Why didn’t you prepare?

New Covid Variants ‘Will Set Us Back A Year’, Experts Warn UK Government (O.)

Ministers are being pressed to reveal what contingency plans are in place to deal with a future Covid variant that evades current vaccines, amid warnings from scientific advisers that such an outcome could set the battle against the pandemic back a year or more. Recent papers produced by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have suggested that the arrival of a variant that evades vaccines is a “realistic possibility”. Sage backed continued work on new vaccines that reduce infection and transmission more than current jabs, the creation of more vaccine-production facilities in the UK and lab-based studies to predict evolution of variants. With the arrival of a new variant seen as one of the main dangers that could intensify the crisis once again, prominent scientific figures stressed the risks.

Prof Graham Medley, a member of Sage and a leader of the government’s Covid modelling group, said it was “clearly something that the planners and scientists should take very seriously as it would put us back a long way”. “It is not that different to the planning that needs to be done between pandemics – a new variant that was able to overcome immunity significantly would be essentially a new virus,” he said. “The advantage would be that we know we can generate vaccines against this virus – and relatively quickly. The disadvantage is that we would be back to the same situation we were in a year ago, depending on how much impact current immunity had against a new variant. Hopefully, evolution is slow, so that new variants arise that are only marginally evasive rather than one big jump.”

Dr Marc Baguelin, from Imperial College’s Covid-19 response team and a member of the government’s SPI-M modelling group, said preventing the importation of variants of concern with “moderate to high immune-escape properties would be critical, as these could lead to future waves orders of magnitude larger than the ones experienced so far”. “It is unlikely that such a new virus evades entirely all immunity from past infection or vaccines,” he said. “Some immunity should remain at least for the most severe outcomes such as death or hospitalisation. We would most likely be able to update the current vaccines to include the emerging strain. “But doing so would take months and means that we might need to reimpose restrictions if there were a significant public health risk. The amount of restrictions would be a political decision and would need to be proportionate with how much this virus would evade current vaccines.”

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Not long ago all of it was voluntary. All of it.

Booster Shots Will ‘Be Obligatory For Trips Abroad And Care Home Staff’ (DM)

Booster jabs are set to be compulsory for travel abroad and care home staff in plans under discussion by Ministers. A source close to the talks about Covid certification told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The assumption is that you will be required to have the most up-to-date health passport. ‘So if the advice is to have a booster six months after your second jab, then that is what you’ll need.’ At the moment, double-jabbed Brits can go to amber list countries without having to quarantine upon their return. Booster vaccines will be compulsory for care home workers once they are rolled out, a senior Government source said. This will add to the legal requirements for care home staff, who from October will have to be double-jabbed to work in the sector, subject to parliamentary approval.

Millions are set to be offered a third jab from September after Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced the roll-out to priority groups. A Minister told the Mail on Sunday the ‘logical’ move will be to make the booster shots a requirement for travel, adding that the most up-to-date Covid certification for travel will become as normal as the need to have a yellow fever jab to enter certain countries. Last night Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, said: ‘If I were the Government I would tread carefully on this. Booster jabs will take a while to get to the majority of the travelling public. ‘And there are issues around whether they are necessary – some scientists say that they may not be necessary.’

Meanwhile talks about what booster jabs will mean for domestic certification are still at an early stage within Government. One insider said that, as domestic passports have only been announced for nightclubs, discussions over whether boosters will one day be required for entry are still in ‘very early days’. The Government will make its decision on boosters following final advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which is reviewing the scientific evidence on the third jabs. The JCVI previously issued interim advice in June that Brits ‘should be prepared’ for another round of inoculations.

Read more …

The article doesn’t know whether to agree or not.

The Teens Who’d Prefer To Catch Covid Than Have The Vaccine (DM)

Trawling through Government Covid statistics might seem like a strange hobby for a 16-year-old. But when he isn’t practising on his guitar, or watching TikTok videos, that’s what Jacob Mellor can be found doing. And thanks to his keen interest in ‘the data’, he has come to a decision – one that could have a profound impact on his own health and that of those around him. Earlier this month, when it was announced that all 16- and 17-year-olds would be offered a Covid jab, Jacob promptly announced he would be opting out. All the evidence, he says, shows this virus is not a threat to him. And so he feels it would be better to catch Covid, and develop natural immunity, than to have a vaccine.

‘From the beginning we’ve been told that this virus didn’t affect kids,’ says Jacob, from Croydon in South London, who attends an independent school. ‘We even had assemblies about it at school, telling us why we shouldn’t worry because it’s just a cold for people my age. ‘So why should I take a vaccine to protect against something I won’t get ill from? Especially when I know there’s a risk involved with having it. The risk is small, I appreciate that, but it’s still there and I can’t get over that.’ Not only does Jacob have no qualms about catching Covid, he is almost looking forward to it. ‘It would be a good thing, in my eyes. I’d build a strong immunity and I wouldn’t have to worry about risks, like I would with the jab,’ he says.

‘Loads of my friends had Covid last year and the worst that happened was that they were stuck in bed for a couple of days. We all see Covid as something we’re not really bothered about. If I get it, it might suck for a few days, but I’ll be immune, so there’s a benefit to me.’ According to Jacob’s mother Sally, her eldest child – who is one of three, with siblings aged 14 and nine – is ‘an independent thinker’ and has been ‘brought up to appreciate the value of natural immunity’. Sally, a 51-year-old creative director for a major retailer, and husband Steve, 49, a recruitment director, haven’t been vaccinated either. ‘I believe in natural immunity, and I’m nervous about the lack of long-term data about the Covid vaccine,’ she adds.

‘We were a family that would be outside in the dirt and around animals, and I told the kids this would protect them from allergies and make sure they could fight off infections. ‘So Jacob has always asked questions when it came to vaccines, from a very young age – like why did he have to have a tetanus booster, for instance – although he did have all his childhood jabs.’ While more than 16,000 of Britain’s 1.5 million 16- and 17-year-olds took up the Government’s offer to get jabbed last weekend, thousands, like Jacob, are not as enthusiastic. The latest Office for National Statistics Covid survey suggests one in ten of them don’t plan to have the vaccine.

Read more …

“But *NOW* you are the problem. You are guilty. You are an extremist. You didn’t change at all. Something else changed. But notice how the spotlight on what changed is YOU, and not the origin of the change?”

I Wish To Take A Little Walk With You And Talk, Deliberately, About This (TLR)

Something shifted after the election of Barack H Obama in 2008. Something subtle that was quietly taking place in the background that surfaced just slow enough so that most people didn’t notice. But before getting to that, let’s first just look at the DHS announcement as presented in their words. Look at this small sentence and the worldview it expresses: ..”Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions.”.. Notice the word “perceived”? The government imposed mandates, mask and vaccination requirements are only “perceived government restrictions.” In essence, the chains that bind your expressions of liberty and freedom are merely figments of your imagination.


The needle being forced into the arm of federal workers by the Federal Government is only the perception of a forced medical treatment. Your perception of what they are doing is the problem. You must therefore correct your wrong-thoughts to eliminate the wrong perception. Yes, Dear Leader appreciates your compliance. Your reluctance to change your perception is what identifies you as an extremist. Think about that for a moment with your friends and family. The label of Domestic Extremist is applied to the target who is reluctant to change their perception. The target is transparently innocent of any wrongdoing. They are doing, feeling, believing, and ultimately living, exactly the same as they always have…. but something now is different. You are transparently innocent, yet you are now guilty and labeled. This takes our conversation to an inflection point.

When Barack H Obama was elected/installed as the President of the United States, the people in/around him brought forward a new approach. While the U.S. media had always been biased, manipulative and dishonest, there was something more that changed after the installation of The One, the Lightbringer… and it was assisted by the rise of Big Tech and Social Media. The shift coincided with the merge between the intelligence apparatus and the new platforms of social media. The speed of the shift aligned with the speed of technology that was driving communication. Together the intelligence apparatus, the customary U.S. media and Big Tech began testing how far and how fast they could control the outlook of Americans. Historic leftists, progressives, used to justify their own behavior, and the behavior of their tribe through the media.

History is replete with leftist media excusing the behavior of the transparently guilty. The media would create narratives to justify extremism they aligned with. The transparently guilty were excused and defended. We became used to seeing this. However, when traditional media merged in ideology with social media, no longer was they trying to excuse or justify the transparently guilty of accountability; starting around 2011 & 2012 what the new-era attack started to do was falsely accuse the transparently innocent. Together with ideological institutions in government (Obama’s crew ie. DOJ etc.), the customary U.S. media and Big Tech began testing how far and fast they could control the outlook of Americans… to accuse the transparently innocent. The shift was directly proportional to the training, teaching and development of the crew that came with Obama. All classically trained Saul Alinsky followers.

The Harvard police officer (James Crowley), just doing his job…. that led to Henry Louis Gates outrage, that led to the big PR effort and the beer summit. “Never let a crisis go to waste”… All optically and narrative controlled. Then came George Zimmerman, then Darren Wilson, then The Baltimore Six,… all, again, transparently innocent – but the media framework was exactly the opposite. They were able to label the transparently innocent as ‘guilty’, just by controlling information. Skip through the years of numerous examples as the orchestration continued. The manipulative effort is driven by political intent. Take a transparently innocent person and manipulate a narrative to make them guilty Now, pause for a moment and go back to the current DHS announcement.

What does this current DHS terrorism bulletin do? It exactly continues the process. Government is now expanding the targeting of the transparently innocent. You hold the same ideas, outlooks, worldviews, and expectations of Liberty and Freedom that you held yesterday, last week, last month and perhaps even long before 9-11-01… But *NOW* you are the problem. You are guilty. You are an extremist. You didn’t change at all. Something else changed. But notice how the spotlight on what changed is YOU, and not the origin of the change? You are the problem. Not those changing the structures of freedom or liberty… YOU are the guilty party. See how they did that? See the shift now?

Read more …

 

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 July 11, 2021  Posted by at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


John Swope Trees in fog (Chile) 1939

 

Things To Know Before You Allow Your Child To Get The Covid-19 Vaccine (Con.)
Well-Deserved Consequences (Denninger)
Ivermectin. WHO Scientist Faces Death Penalty (Observateur)
Can Long Covid Be Cured By A Monthly Dose Of The Vaccine? (DM)
1/4-Dose Of Moderna Covid Vaccine Still Rouses A Big Immune Response (Nature)
Annexin A2 Deficiency (Lee)
Greece’s Coronavirus Predictions Show Worsening Epidemiological Picture (GR)
Don’t Fool with the Diversity of Mother Nature (McCullough)
Rand Paul To Introduce Bill To End Mask Mandate On Planes (JTN)
OPCW Report On Navalny Makes Contradictory Claims (RT)
Say Hello To The Diplo-Taliban (Escobar)
China: Fragile Giant (Jim Rickards)

 

 

 

 

Dr. Martin on DaszaK

 

 

LIES.

Things To Know Before You Allow Your Child To Get The Covid-19 Vaccine (Con.)

COVID-19 for children IS LESS THAN A FLU. This is a very well known fact among the experts, and yet, it’s been systematically hidden in mainstream Media. Still, if you follow mainstream Media, you’ll get the impression that there’s a need to get children vaccinated anyhow, based on three premises:

1) Children need to be vaccinated to help to avoid infection of adults
2) These new vaccines have no long term adverse effects
3) There is consensus in the scientific community about the safety of these new therapies

1) Children need to be vaccinated to help to avoid infection of adults IT IS A LIE that children need to take part in the effort to reduce transmission by getting inoculated, BECAUSE IT IS ADMITTED BY the manufacturers that it doesn’t prevent transmission, it only reduces symptoms. You can find that admission in the documents of the trials and on the manufacturer’s websites. Whenever you hear that “transmission is cut by these therapies”, it comes from scientists (which are really LOBBYISTS, once you take the time to research their conflicts of interest). You will never find an assertion about these vaccines granting immunity BY THE COMPANIES THEMSELVES. The simple fact is that the TRIALS WERE EXPRESSLY DESIGNED only to try to “search for” reduction of symptoms, which clearly means no immunity was found: otherwise that would have been the focus of their research. And to top all of this, the number of cases of vaccinated patients dying with COVID-19 shows, if anything, that transmission is not halted by the injections.

2)These new vaccines have no long term adverse effectsIT IS A LIE that these new “vaccines” have no long term effects, for the simple reason that it’s an assertion that’s impossible to certify without time passing by. The mere fact that somebody would guarantee that no long term effects are possible SHOULD RAISE YOUR CONCERNS regarding the trustworthiness of that official. And yet that’s what you hear from most of them. Usually you also get some of them even saying that mRNA vaccines have decades of research. EXACTLY! That doesn’t mean decades of guaranteed safety. On the contrary, mRNA vaccines had never been approved before, EXACTLY BECAUSE OF SAFETY ISSUES.

3)There is consensus in the scientific community about the safety of these new therapies IT IS A LIE that there is consensus in the scientific community around the safety of the new vaccines. You are led to think that, because the ones raising the alarms are systematically censored and not invited on TV. Find the thousands of doctors saying otherwise and you’ll easily prove that CONSENSUS IS THE BIGGEST LIE OF THEM ALL. Please, don’t take these accusations against mainstream Media lightly. Confirm by yourself that actually, for whatever reason, Media has been “protecting” the reputation of what actually are their main sponsors. As such, it is cautious to—in the very least—postpone the vaccination of your child for a year so and see how it goes. The vaccine adverse reporting systems in United States and Europe have registered several cases of heart problems developed among young people.

No matter how low the risk of this is, don’t you think that your children deserve the opportunity to decide for themselves ONCE THEY’RE ADULTS if they want to join a trial for an experimental therapy? Because YES: the manufacturers have been granted with an Emergency Use Authorization only, and it is as such that they state that their “products” are strictly on trial phase until the end of 2022. TECHNICALLY & PRACTICALLY, these vaccines, no matter how beneficial they can be, are an experiment performed on humans on the largest scale ever witnessed. We all hope the end results are good, but under no circumstance it’s reasonable to bet on that when the future health of our children is at stake. This is absolutely not about vaccine hesitancy. This is about responsible parenthood.

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Long essay by Karl.

Can’t repeat this often enough these days:

“..80% of all people had pre-existing resistance and, absent severe co-morbid issues that could kill them literally at any time were never at material risk..”

Well-Deserved Consequences (Denninger)

Going back to the start of Covid-19 there were several things that were apparent: Not everyone was susceptible to a serious or fatal outcome irrespective of age or medical status. Diamond Princess proved this conclusively. It was ignored. We later conclusively and scientifically proved that approximately 80% of all people had pre-existing resistance and, absent severe co-morbid issues that could kill them literally at any time were never at material risk. If you let the virus into nursing homes it will kill a lot of people. Kirkland proved that conclusively. We not only ignored that we called the employees of said places “heroes” and did not demand they isolate away from the general population, paying them whatever we had to in order to get them to do it, even when we had a wild excess of hotel space in which we could have as we had (foolishly) locked down basically all travel and leisure activity.

Children and young, healthy adults are at little or no risk. It’s not zero, but it’s less than the flu. We now know fewer than 400 people under age 18 have been killed by Covid in the US and virtually all of those who died had unrelated life-threatening medical issues (such as childhood cancers.) For older, more-morbid people it’s another story entirely; they have 1,000x as much danger or more. So what did we do? We closed schools and forced 60 million healthy kids to wear masks. In other words we made children pay for other people’s risk, and we did it by force, screwing all those kids out of months to a year or more of schooling and treating them as plague rats who were responsible for killing their grandmother. Most of the morbid conditions that put you at particular risk are voluntary. Specifically, Type II diabetes and obesity.

We not only lied to kids about their risk we forced children and young adults to bear the cost of voluntary adult behavior. This is particularly monstrous and massively compounds the above point. We allowed the demonization of drugs that had been used safely for decades for other conditions and in fact let them be effectively banned. Was there proof that they worked? Not early on, but so what? The so-called “right to try” that was much-ballyhooed and paraded around for over a decade disappeared instantly under force by every single social media company. Who remembers all the crying mothers in front of Congress and elsewhere begging for access to unproved but possible treatments for their children with rare diseases and the attendant and relentless GoFraudMe cry-room campaigns?

Abortion, a purely-elective procedure undertaken by millions and considered a sacred civil right with its need arising in nearly every case from voluntary adult (irrespective of age) conduct has a higher risk of death than Ivermectin. Where the hell did all those screaming for access to unproven therapies go and why did not that same principle apply here, especially for consenting adults? Lupus and RA patients have taken HCQ as a maintenance drug on a daily basis for over a decade and the safety profile and its contraindications are well-known.

[..] Why didn’t Trump’s HHS — or Biden’s — do it the other way around? You get your $13,000 bonus if the patient walks out of your hospital under his or her own power. If he or she dies the hospital gets nothing. Want to take a bet on how much Ivermectin, Budesonide and HCQ would have been used had the government done that? [..] Here’s reality whether you wish to admit it or not: If 5%, 10% or 50% of the population decides they’ve had enough of this robbery and death then it stops. One hopes the demand is enough. It should be enough, but you have to be willing to back it up just like the Minutemen were on April 19th of 1775.

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Google translation has some “woke” problems with he/she/they. Dr. Soumya Swaminathan is a woman.

Ivermectin. WHO Scientist Faces Death Penalty (Observateur)

On May 25, the Indian Bar Association (IBA) filed a lawsuit against Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO Chief Scientist, accusing him of causing the deaths of Indian citizens by deceiving them about the ivermectin. The WHO scientist is accused of making a misleading tweet on May 10, 2021 against the use of ivermectin which resulted in the state of Tamil Nadu removing ivermectin from the protocol the following day. He had just declared this treatment effective against Covid-19. If Dr Soumya Swaminathan is found guilty, then she could be sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Attorney Dipali Ojha, senior lawyer for the Indian Bar Association, threatened Dr Swaminathan with criminal charges “for every death” caused by his acts of commission and omission.

The brief accused Dr Swaminathan of wrongdoing in using his position as health authority to serve the special interests of the lucrative vaccine industry. Ivermectin is an inexpensive drug that is prescribed as an antiparasitic. It has gained popularity for the prevention of covid-19. The WHO and the FDA do not approve ivermectin, but many doctors and scientists believe it to be effective. Some claim that states in India that used ivermectin had much better results and significantly fewer deaths from covid than states in India that did not use ivermectin. In the regions of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Goa cases fell by 98%, 97%, 94% and 86% respectively. In contrast, Tamil Nadu who chose not to use ivermectin, the number of cases exploded and became the highest in India. Deaths in Tamil Nadu have increased tenfold.

In a test of over 4,000 people in India (over 3,000 took ivermectin) and over 1,000 did not. The results showed that 2% of people who took ivermectin had a covid confirmed by a PCR test and that 11.7% of people who did not take ivermectin had a covid confirmed by a PCR test. The specific charges include conducting a disinformation campaign against ivermectin and posting statements on social and mainstream media to falsely influence the public against the use of ivermectin despite the existence of large amounts of ivermectin. clinical data showing its profound efficacy in the prevention and treatment of covid-19.

Read more …

First: something to take monthly doesn’t meet even the most flexible defiition of “vaccine”. Second, why not find out what the problem is before injecting more of the stuff?

Can Long Covid Be Cured By A Monthly Dose Of The Vaccine? (DM)

Even as Covid cases continue to climb, the Government’s plan to lift all remaining restrictions in a matter of days is still on track for a single reason: the vaccine has severely weakened the link between infections, hospitalisations and deaths. Yet, amid the optimism, another concern has cast a shadow – the rising diagnoses of long Covid, the debilitating condition that leaves sufferers battling symptoms for months after being infected. More than a million Britons are said to be living with lingering problems, from breathlessness to brain fog, and that figure could double by the end of the summer, say experts. With no effective drug treatments yet discovered, there has been little hope for those living with the worst difficulties – until now.

In a world first, British scientists are set to explore giving long Covid patients monthly doses of the Covid vaccine, in an effort to combat the chronic condition. The first stage of the study was given the green light on Friday: later this year, 40 long Covid sufferers will be offered at least two extra jabs. Funding has been offered by several of the major vaccine developers, and if the pilot is successful the scientists involved have been told they can recruit thousands more patients. Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, Dr David Strain, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, who will lead the trial, says the manufacturers are interested in funding the study after early research showed that long Covid symptoms were significantly reduced after patients had a jab.

Dr Strain said: ‘Many saw a dramatic improvement within days of their jab. Their fatigue disappeared, they were able to walk further without feeling breathless. ‘Some said it was the closest to normal they’d felt since they first caught Covid. ‘In an earlier study we saw this lasted for about a month after the first dose, but then symptoms return. ‘The same pattern was seen when people went for their second jab. We want to find out whether, over time, offering regular doses can make this change permanent.’

Read more …

A monthly dose of that then? ha ha.

1/4-Dose Of Moderna Covid Vaccine Still Rouses A Big Immune Response (Nature)

A little bit of coronavirus vaccine goes a long way towards generating lasting immunity. Two jabs that each contained only one-quarter of the standard dose of the Moderna COVID vaccine gave rise to long-lasting protective antibodies and virus-fighting T cells, according to tests in nearly three dozen people1. The results hint at the possibility of administering fractional doses to stretch limited vaccine supplies and accelerate the global immunization effort. Since 2016, such a dose-reduction strategy has successfully vaccinated millions of people in Africa and South America against yellow fever2. But no similar approach has been tried in response to COVID-19, despite vaccine shortages in much of the global south.

“There’s a huge status quo bias, and it’s killing people,” says Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “Had we done this starting in January, we could have vaccinated tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions more people.” In the earliest trial of Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccine, study participants received one of three dose levels: 25, 100 or 250 micrograms3. The top dose proved too toxic. The low dose elicited the weakest immune response. The middle dose seemed to offer the best balance: it triggered strong immunity and had acceptable side effects. That 100-microgram dose ultimately became the one authorized for mass use in dozens of countries. But Moderna scientists later showed that a half-dose seemed to be just as good as the standard dose at stimulating immune protection4.

To find out whether a low dose might offer protection, scientists analysed blood from 35 participants in the original trial. Each had received two 25-microgram jabs of vaccine 28 days apart. Six months after the second shot, nearly all of the 35 participants had ‘neutralizing’ antibodies, which block the virus from infecting cells, the researchers reported in a preprint published on 5 July1. Participants’ blood also contained an armada of different T cells, both ‘killer’ cells that can destroy infected cells and a variety of ‘helper’ cells that aid in general immune defence. Levels of both antibodies and T cells were comparable to those found in people who have recovered from COVID-19.

“It is quite remarkable — and quite promising — that you can easily detect responses for that long a time,” says Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) in California and a co-author of the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed. Corine Geurts van Kessel, a clinical virologist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who was not involved in the study, agrees. “It’s rather good news,” she says. “Even with a low dose, you can prime your own immune system in quite a nice way.”

Read more …

Twitter thread.

Annexin A2 Deficiency (Lee)

Our study explaining the pathophysiology of acute COVID has been published by ERJ, the flagship scientific journal of the European Respiratory Society @ERSpublications. Here, we describe how severe COVID-19 is NOT a viral pneumonia, but a post-viral autoimmune attack of the lung. The target of this autoimmune attack is Annexin A2, a phospholipid-binding protein, which acts as a cofactor for tPA, ensuring integrity of the pulmonary vasculature and promoting lung elasticity. Antagonism of Annexin A2 would cause lung blood clots, pulmonary edema, and ARDS. In essence, anti-Annexin A2 would cause all the hallmark pulmonary pathology already identified on autopsy among severe cases of acute COVID-19. Autoantibodies to this lung protective protein were already identified among hospitalized SARS patients.

Furthermore, Annexin A2 is also expressed in the vasculature of the brain. Therefore, antagonism of Annexin A2 can cause microvascular stroke and damage to the blood-brain barrier, which would result in neuro-inflammation and long-term neurological injury. The implications for acute COVID-19 are enormous. Not only would it explain why steroids work in this disease, but it would suggest that we should be treating the disease more like other autoimmune diseases of the lung. We have misdiagnosed severe cases of acute COVID-19 as a viral pneumonia, which disregards the established evidence that shows viral load of SARS-CoV-2 is markedly diminished by the time patients develop the respiratory distress that only occurs in second stage of the disease.

We are also misdiagnosing Long COVID, which is also characterized by lung perfusion deficits, pulmonary fibrosis, and various neurologic sequelae. Our next studies will establish whether these autoantibodies are also present among patients with persistent post-COVID symptoms. While we are just beginning to establish this evidence, prothrombotic antiphospholipid antibodies have already been well described by @jasonsknight @RayZuoMD and @YogenKanthi. Anti-Annexin A2 is a known “non-criteria” APL antibody that causes thrombosis.

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“Almost everyone who is unvaccinated will catch the coronavirus

Really? As well as everyone who IS vaccinated?

Greece’s Coronavirus Predictions Show Worsening Epidemiological Picture (GR)

Experts warned the public on Friday that predictions of how the coronavirus will develop in Greece over the next couple months are very worrying. The most optimistic forecast for the month of August shows that Greece will diagnose 3,000 new cases of the coronavirus daily. A professor of pulmonology, Nikos Tzanakis, appeared on SKAI TV on Friday to warn the public of the likelihood that coronavirus cases will continue to rise sharply through August and the coming months. “In August we may have 3,000 cases of coronavirus per day in the most favorable scenario, 4,000 cases is the most probable — but there is even the possibility of 6,000 cases a day in the worst case scenario,” Tzanakis outlined, showing the full range of predictions for the development of the coronavirus in Greece.

“Almost everyone who is unvaccinated will catch the coronavirus. It is mathematically certain that a child who returns from summer camp will infect all of the relatives it comes in contact with in a matter of minutes,” continued the professor, illustrating how severe the situation is and the increased transmissibility of the delta variant of the virus. “In order for summer camps to function safely, they must be turned into social bubbles, health measures must be tightened and visits must be completely banned,” Tzanakis said of the popular children’s pastime. He continued by analyzing why it is so important that summer camps do not receive any visitors. According to pulmonologist, if a single asymptomatic adult visits and gives coronavirus to their child, 100 more children will likely come down with the virus.

This concept of a “social bubble” can and should also be applied to adult activities over the summer, said Tzanakis. If an individual visits an island and stays with their friend group, it is unlikely that they will catch the coronavirus according to the expert. By sticking to a “social bubble,” and not going large parties, people can stay safe from the virus while still having fun. The fact that Greece’s coronavirus predictions are so disheartening is likely due to the delta variant and the country’s vaccination campaign, which is slowing down despite new incentives being introduced for young people to get the vaccine.

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Novavax.

Don’t Fool with the Diversity of Mother Nature (McCullough)

In a report from Niesen and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic, a worrisome finding has been reported. Among populations that were > 25% vaccinated, there was a reduced genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 strains. While the authors appeared to imply this was a good finding, other experts disagree. Anytime diversity is reduced in biological systems, it leads to instability in ecological systems. It can be the breeding ground for large evolutionary changes, including large mutations and more aggressive variants. Niesen also found that there was a much greater degree of immunity or “epitopes” on B-cells and T-cells among those unvaccinated, implying that immunity was far more robust than those vaccinated.

Fears about the Niesen findings were confirmed in a paper by Acevedo from Santiago Chile, who reported on the Lambda variant outbreak in Peru, which looks like it clearly occurred as a result of indiscriminate vaccination using the whole killed SARS-CoV-2 Sinovac (Coronovac) vaccine. The Lambda variant, while causing a small outbreak, is notable for having seven mutations in the spike protein – two of which are in the receptor-binding domain and allow complete escape from vaccine immunity. These papers, in aggregate, suggest that mass vaccination into a pandemic is “fooling with mother nature” in a manner that could be catastrophic if the indiscrimination program continues to be forced on the population.

The good news is that on June 30, 2021, in the New England Journal of Medicine, Heath et al. presented the Phase III trial results from Novavax. This antigen-based vaccine does not rely on genetics and should not have the organ toxicities seen with Pfizer, Moderna, and JNJ, and appears to have ~90% vaccine efficacy rates and much better safety data than the genetic vaccines. However, the injection site pain and reactions cannot be minimized. With this as a backdrop, we continue to have a need for early multidrug treatment for COVID-19 for both the vaccine breakthrough cases and the de novo patients.

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“Enough! Time to stop this farce and let people travel in peace!”

Rand Paul To Introduce Bill To End Mask Mandate On Planes (JTN)

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he intends to introduce legislation to scuttle the ongoing federal mask mandate for air travel once the Senate resumes its next session. “When the Senate returns to session, I will be introducing an immediate repeal of the mask mandate on planes,” Paul wrote on Twitter this week. “Enough! Time to stop this farce and let people travel in peace!” The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is enforcing a widespread mask mandate “across all transportation networks throughout the United States, including at airports, onboard commercial aircraft, on over-the-road buses, and on commuter bus and rail systems,” at least through Sept. 13.

Read more …

OPCW is like Bellingcat: NATO fact checkers.

OPCW Report On Navalny Makes Contradictory Claims (RT)

The latest OPCW report containing data on its response to the ‘poisoning’ of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny has glaring inconsistencies, Moscow says, adding that the chemical weapons watchdog has failed to explain them. Russia will seek clarification from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on its findings, the country’s envoy to the chemical weapons watchdog Aleksandr Shulgin has announced. The document, presented at the 97th session of the organization’s executive council earlier this week, contains information on the body’s reaction to Navalny’s poisoning back in August 2020.

In it, the OPCW states that its secretariat “deployed a team to perform a technical assistance visit” related to the suspected poisoning of a “Russian citizen” at Germany’s request on August 20. The problem is that on that day, Navalny was only flying from the Russian Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. It was on that flight that he first felt ill and was then rushed to a hospital in another Siberian city, Omsk, following the plane’s emergency landing. Russia demanded that the OPCW explain “how this is even possible” and why the organization had previously told the participating states that its team was only sent to Germany in early September, Shulgin said.

“So, what do we have here? When Navalny first felt unwell while still onboard a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, the OPCW experts were already waiting for him in Berlin?” According to the Russian envoy to the OPCW, the technical secretariat of the chemical weapons watchdog has so far failed to provide any answer to these questions. According to Shulgin, Russia has “lots of questions” for the OPCW and will seek “clear answers” to every last one. The revelations also elicited a reaction from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova. She said the glaring inconsistencies in the OPCW report only show that some Western nations, together with Navalny himself, are “going down” with their whole “chemical weapons poisoning story.”

Read more …

Russia’s problem now. Wonder what that will mean for the poppy trade.

Say Hello To The Diplo-Taliban (Escobar)

A very important meeting took place in Moscow last week, virtually hush-hush. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, received Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s national security adviser. There were no substantial leaks. A bland statement pointed to the obvious: They “focused on the security situation in Afghanistan during the pullout of Western military contingencies and the escalation of the military-political situation in the northern part of the country.” The real story is way more nuanced. Mohib, representing embattled President Ashraf Ghani, did his best to convince Patrushev that the Kabul administration represents stability. It does not – as the subsequent Taliban advances proved.

Patrushev knew Moscow could not offer any substantial measure of support to the current Kabul arrangement because doing so would burn bridges the Russians would need to cross in the process of engaging the Taliban. Patrushev knows that the continuation of Team Ghani is absolutely unacceptable to the Taliban – whatever the configuration of any future power-sharing agreement. So Patrushev, according to diplomatic sources, definitely was not impressed. This week we can all see why. A delegation from the Taliban political office went to Moscow essentially to discuss with the Russians the fast-evolving mini-chessboard in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban had been to Moscow four months earlier, along with the extended troika (Russia, US, China, Pakistan) to debate the new Afghan power equation.

On this trip, they emphatically assured their interlocutors there’s no Taliban interest in invading any territory of their Central Asia neighbors. It’s not excessive, in view of how cleverly they’ve been playing their hand, to call the Taliban desert foxes. They know well what Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been repeating: Any turbulence coming from Afghanistan will be met with a direct response from the Collective Security Treaty Organization. In addition to stressing that the US withdrawal – actually, repositioning – represents the failure of its Afghan “mission,” Lavrov touched on the two really key points: – The Taliban is increasing its influence in the northern Afghanistan border areas; and – Kabul’s refusal to form a transitional government is “promoting a belligerent solution” to the drama. This implies Lavrov expects much more flexibility from both Kabul and the Taliban in the Sisyphean power-sharing task ahead.

And then, relieving the tension, when asked by a Russian journalist if Moscow will send troops to Afghanistan, Lavrov reverted to Mr Cool: “The answer is obvious.”

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One child comes back to bite.

China: Fragile Giant (Jim Rickards)

President Xi Jinping could quickly lose what the Chinese call, “The Mandate of Heaven.” That’s a term that describes the intangible goodwill and popular support needed by emperors to rule China for the past 3,000 years. If The Mandate of Heaven is lost, a ruler can fall quickly. Even before the crisis, China has had serious structural economic problems that are finally catching up with it. China is so heavily indebted that it’s at the point where more debt does not produce growth. Adding additional debt today slows the economy and calls into question China’s ability to service its existing debt. China also confronts an insolvent banking system and a real estate bubble. Up to half of China’s investment is a complete waste.

It does produce jobs and utilize inputs like cement, steel, copper and glass. But the finished product, whether a city, train station or sports arena, is often a white elephant that will remain unused. The Chinese landscape is littered with “ghost cities” that have resulted from China’s wasted investment and flawed development model. Essentially, China is on the horns of a dilemma with no good way out. China has driven growth with excessive credit, wasted infrastructure investment and Ponzi schemes. The Chinese leadership knows this, but they had to keep the growth machine in high gear to create jobs for millions of migrants coming from the countryside to the city and to maintain jobs for the millions more already in the cities.

The two ways to get rid of debt are deflation (which results in write-offs, bankruptcies and unemployment) or inflation (which results in theft of purchasing power, similar to a tax increase). Both alternatives are unacceptable to the Communists because they lack the political legitimacy to endure either unemployment or inflation. Either policy would cause social unrest and unleash revolutionary potential. China also has serious demographic challenges that will limit future growth… In 1980, China instituted a one-child policy in an effort to control population growth. But the 1980 announcement was really a matter of formalizing an existing policy. The Chinese have a cultural preference for boys over girls. So, when the one-child policy was implemented, the Chinese used pre-natal tests to determine sex and then aborted the girls.

At a more crude level, families kept buckets of water next to birthing beds so that if a girl was born she could be drowned immediately. It is estimated that between 20 million to 30 million baby girls were killed this way, resulting in an equivalent surplus of men over women. These excess men will never find wives in China. Since women can be selective about husbands, it follows that the 30 million excess men will be the least talented and poorest in Chinese society. This cohort is highly prone to antisocial behavior, including alcohol and drug abuse and violence. The demographic time bomb is now detonating. The missing children from thirty or forty years ago are the missing prime age workers of today.

Read more …

 

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Conspiracy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1413801772452392960

 

 

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Mar 012020
 


Arthur Rothstein Accident on US 40 between Hagerstown and Cumberland, Maryland 1936

 

 

 

HK Coronavirus Outbreak Not At Peak: Gabriel Leung (RTHK)
Indonesia’s Frontline Hospital Defends Policies To Tackle Coronavirus (R.)
Don’t Test, Don’t Tell! (Ben Hunt)
Markets Expected To Fall Further As Coronavirus Hits China’s Economy (G.)
China Pollution Clear Amid Coronavirus Slowdown (BBC)
Bernie Sanders Looks To Blow Away Rivals On Super Tuesday (G.)
US and Taliban Ink Afghanistan Peace Agreement (RT)
‘Get Out Of The Way, Let Us Deal With Assad’, Erdogan Says He Told Putin (RT)
Threat Of Russia-Turkey-NATO Hot War A Godsend For US Foreign Policy (RT)
Greece Vetoes NATO Communique Intended to Support Turkey in Syria (GR)
Turkey Minister: 76,358 Migrants Headed To Border With Greece (K.)

 

Cases 85,683 (+ 1,950 from yesterday’s 83,733)

Deaths 2,933 (+ 73 from yesterday’s 2,860)

 

• First cases: Armenia, Ireland, Luxembourg

• First deaths: US, Australia, Thailand

• China 79,824 cases, 593 new, total deaths 2,870, 41,625 recovered, 2 more doctors die
– new Hubei cases rise, 565 in the provincial capital Wuhan

• South Korea 3,736, 1023 new cases, but :
– estimates of 4,200 infections among Shincheonji church members
– that’s 80% of those tested, there are 210,000 church members, some of whom visited Wuhan

• Italy 1,178 (up 31%!), 29 deaths

• Iran 593, 43 deaths
– Twitter: “The country is imploding – law and order to disappear in the next days.”

• Japan 241 cases, 2 deaths

Singapore 102 cases
France 100
Hong Kong 95, 2 deaths
US 71, 1 death
Thailand 42 cases, 1 death
Bahrain 38
UK 23
Switzerland 18
Norway 15
Iraq 13
Lebanon 7
Holland 7
Pakistan 4
Mexico 4

59 countries affected

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From Worldometer

 

 

I added a third counter, from COVID2019.app, a project where 70 people -and counting- work together

 

 

 

 

Leung is behind some of the most dire predictions. But not for his homebase HK.

HK Coronavirus Outbreak Not At Peak: Gabriel Leung (RTHK)

The Dean of the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine, Professor Gabriel Leung, on Sunday warned that the coronavirus outbreak in Hong Kong had not yet reached its peak, saying it was too early to tell when it would be over and people should not let their guard down against the respiratory disease. As of Saturday, Hong Kong had reported 95 confirmed cases of the virus, known as Covid-19, and two deaths. But speaking after a radio programme, Professor Leung said the overall decline in new cases on the mainland did show that the first wave of the outbreak there was largely under control, except in Hubei province, where the disease appears to have originated.

On Sunday, the mainland reported 573 new Covid-19 infections, up from the 427 on Saturday and the highest for a week, although much lower than earlier in the month. The mainland’s National Health Commission also reported 35 deaths, fewer than the 47 on Saturday, which took the death toll to 2,870. All but one of Sunday’s deaths – and all but three of its new cases – were in Hubei. The total number of cases on the mainland is now approaching 80,000. Professor Leung said the rest of the world was now only seeing the beginning of the outbreak and this would make containing the spread of the virus in Hong Kong more difficult. However, he said Hong Kong had actually been doing well at virus control.

“The rest of the world actually views Hong Kong, along with Singapore, as the gold standard in epidemic control,” he said. “If you look at these two places, we have very similar absolute numbers of confirmed cases, yet we have a population that is one third bigger then Singapore, so – on a per capita basis – we’re not doing too badly.”


Corona timeline develops in very similar ways in various locations

Read more …

Over 260 million people, 141 tests. It’s almost like the US.

Indonesia’s Frontline Hospital Defends Policies To Tackle Coronavirus (R.)

Indonesia has the resources to cope with a coronavirus outbreak, the director of its leading infectious diseases hospital said, defending detection procedures in the Southeast Asian nation of more than 260 million, where no cases have been reported. The world’s fourth most populous nation has tested 141 suspected cases, a small figure for its population, sparking concern among some medical professionals of a lack of vigilance and a risk of undetected cases. Neighboring Malaysia has reportedly run about 1,000 tests, and Britain more than 10,000. “We can’t doubt our skills and the facts we gather,” said Muhammad Syahril, director of the Sulianti Saroso hospital in Jakarta, the capital, when asked why Indonesia had detected no cases.

“If we don’t have cases, we don’t have cases,” he said in an interview at the hospital on Friday. “Why would we cover it up?” [..] The hospital was ready to tackle any outbreak, armed with experience gained in handling disease such as the 2003-2004 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), he said. A health ministry official previously told Reuters that some hospitals, particularly in eastern Indonesia, had smaller capacity to handle virus cases. But even in Jakarta not all best practices appear to be followed and a recent visit to another hospital revealed some nurses without masks, despite attending to a patient with fever.

Fuelling concern about Indonesia’s vulnerability, four infections were confirmed in travelers who had spent time there, including a Japanese national living in Malaysia and one returning to New Zealand from Iran via the resort island of Bali. Indonesian physician Shela Putri Sundawa worries that screening could miss potential carriers without symptoms. “When people have travel or contact history, but they only have issues with coughing or minor fever, they’ll just be monitored,” she said, calling for tighter surveillance. Tests were run when doctors determined that symptoms pointed “to that direction”, Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto saidlast week. “Imagine if everybody who had a cough or flu was checked, then millions would be checked,” he said, adding that it was “a blessing from the Almighty” that no cases had been found.

Read more …

Now repeat this in dozens of other countries.

Don’t Test, Don’t Tell! (Ben Hunt)

Patient comes in from another hospital on Wednesday, Feb. 19 – this is one week ago – already intubated and on a ventilator, and the doctors at UC Davis – who have treated other COVID-19 cases – IMMEDIATELY suspect COVID-19. But the CDC refuses to test for COVID-19. Why? Because it didn’t fit their “criteria” for testing. They didn’t know for sure that the patient was in mainland China within the past 14 days, and they didn’t know for sure that the patient was in close contact with another confirmed case, so BY DEFINITION this patient can’t possibly have COVID-19. No test for you! This is “Don’t Test, Don’t Tell” and it is the single most incompetent, corrupt public health policy of my lifetime. And it’s happening all over the country.

[..] the update: 83 people are in self-quarantine at home, where they are supposed to “check their temperature” daily. Don’t have a thermometer? Not to worry! The Nassau County Health Commission will provide one for you! Who are the 83 in self-quarantine? Why, they’re everyone that Homeland Security says should be in self-quarantine, based on “current guidelines” of someone who was in mainland China within the past 14 days. Has it been 15 days since your mainland China visit? Have you been to Northern Italy in past 14 days? Have you been to Iran in past 14 days? Have you been to South Korea in past 14 days? Well, no self-quarantine for you! You’re fine!

And here’s the kicker. Not only is there ZERO tracking or monitoring of anyone who has been swimming in the coronavirus stew of South Korea, Northern Italy and Iran, but let’s say that you have in fact been to one of those areas recently and now you’re feeling sick. You go to the doctor and you tell her the whole story. Both of you suspect it might be COVID-19. You’re trying to do the right thing here. You call the county health authority. You call the state health authority. You call the CDC. And then you learn the awful truth of Don’t Test, Don’t Tell. It’s not that testing is not available…It’s that testing is not ALLOWED. [..] here’s the other quote from the UC Davis email that I’d like you to pay close attention to:

“When the patient arrived [Wednesday], the patient had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition. … On Sunday, the CDC ordered COVID-19 testing of the patient and the patient was put on airborne precautions and strict contact precautions.” Translation: for four days, every healthcare professional treating this patient at UC Davis was exposed to airborne transmission of COVID-19. And so was every healthcare professional at the hospital before UC Davis. Because the CDC refused to test this patient for COVID-19 in a timely manner, the doctors and nurses and technicians caring for this patient were put at risk.

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But!: “The most horrible week for the Dow since the GFC in 2008 is hardly visible on the long-term chart.”

Imagine what would need to happen to make it visible.

Markets Expected To Fall Further As Coronavirus Hits China’s Economy (G.)

It is likely the fresh data, which measures the economic impact of Beijing’s efforts to clamp down on the virus, will further spook investors who sent global markets tumbling 11% last week in the worst seven-day period for stocks since the 2008 financial crash. With factories forced to remain closed after the traditional lunar new year holiday shutdown, China’s official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), a widely watched measure of economic activity, fell further in February than at any time in the last 12 years, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said. The bureau found a significant collapse in domestic and export orders and a contraction of the country’s burgeoning service sector.

Similar surveys expected next month covering Japan and South Korea, both seriously affected by the coronavirus outbreak, could prolong the rout on global stock markets, analysts said. The outbreak has already disrupted supplies to factories in Europe, where companies have struggled to access vital components sourced from east Asia. Investors expect to find out in the next few days whether the outbreak is accelerating in the US, the world’s biggest economy, and how far central banks and governments are prepared to go to deal with an epidemic. “Right now the market is saying that this is unbounded. We don’t know what the limits are and we don’t know where it’s going to peak,” said Graham Tanaka, the chief investment officer at New York-based Tanaka Capital. Stock markets globally lost about $5tn of value last week, as measured by the MSCI all-country index.

Last weekend China’s president, Xi Jinping, told local officials that low-risk areas should “resume full production and normal life”. The government reported that larger factories reached 85.6% of their capacity by the middle of last week. Analysts at ING said: “This isn’t as positive as it sounds. Even if China‘s factory production can recover in March, it will still face the risk of a low level of export orders. This is because the supply chain will continue to be broken, this time in South Korea, Japan, Europe, and the US, where Covid-19 has begun to spread.” Unofficial reports show that factories outside Hubei province, where the virus started, could be working at no more than 75% of their capacity and many nearer 25% to 50% while millions of workers remain trapped in their home province, unable to travel back to their place of work.

Read more …

Silver linings are everywhere.

China Pollution Clear Amid Coronavirus Slowdown (BBC)

Satellite images have shown a dramatic decline in pollution levels over China, which is “at least partly” due to an economic slowdown prompted by the coronavirus, US space agency Nasa says. Nasa maps show falling levels of nitrogen dioxide this year. It comes amid record declines in China’s factory activity as manufacturers stop work in a bid to contain coronavirus. [..] Nasa scientists said the reduction in levels of nitrogen dioxide – a noxious gas emitted by motor vehicles and industrial facilities – was first apparent near the source of the outbreak in Wuhan city but then spread across the country.

Nasa compared the first two months of 2019 with the same period this year. The space agency noted that the decline in air pollution levels coincided with restriction imposed on transportation and business activities, and as millions of people went into quarantine. “This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic drop-off over such a wide area for a specific event,” Fei Liu, an air quality researcher at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. She added that she had observed a decline in nitrogen dioxide levels during the economic recession in 2008, but said that decrease was more gradual. Nasa noted that China’s Lunar New Year celebrations in late January and early February have been linked to decreases in pollution levels in the past. But it said they normally increase once the celebrations are over.

Read more …

Oh ye of little faith in the DNC.

Bernie Sanders Looks To Blow Away Rivals On Super Tuesday (G.)

Bernie Sanders doesn’t do things by half measures. As he vies to become the 46th president of the United States he is looking to shatter no fewer than three historic records. President Sanders would be the first Jewish incumbent of the most powerful office on Earth. Aged 79 on inauguration day, he would become the oldest president in US history having unseated the current record-holder, Donald Trump, 73. Most striking of all, he would be the first American commander-in-chief describing himself as a “democratic socialist”. Judging by recent attacks from his detractors – Democratic ones, not Trump supporters – that is the political equivalent of carrying the coronavirus.

“I’ll tell you what it adds up to,” said Pete Buttigieg, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, at this week’s TV debate ahead of Saturday’s primary in South Carolina. Buttigieg referenced Sanders’ “radical” policies of universal tax-funded healthcare, debt-free college tuition and a Green New Deal to tackle the climate crisis, then said: “It adds up to four more years of Donald Trump.” On Tuesday Sanders has the chance to take his political insurgency and wipe it across the nation. In the 2020 cycle, Super Tuesday is even more super-charged than usual, providing him with an opportunity to take his already impressive lead over Buttigieg and six other Democratic rivals and virtually blast them out of the water.

In Iowa he finished a splinter-thin second to Buttigieg. In New Hampshire he won. In Nevada he sealed his frontrunner status with a slam-dunk victory. Now Super Tuesday promises to project him to all-but invincible heights. Fourteen states go to the polls on 3 March, between them commanding two-thirds of the 1991 delegates he needs to win outright.

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At least it sounds good.

If only because John Bolton said on Twitter:

Signing this agreement with Taliban is an unacceptable risk to America’s civilian population. This is an Obama-style deal. Legitimizing Taliban sends the wrong signal to ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists, and to America’s enemies generally.”

US and Taliban Ink Afghanistan Peace Agreement (RT)

Washington and the Taliban movement have signed a deal that lays out conditions for the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan. The agreement was signed by US peace envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and one of the Taliban’s senior leaders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Qatar’s capital Doha on Saturday. The deal will see Washington and its allies withdrawing their troops from five bases in Afghanistan within the next 135 days. The remaining American soldiers will leave the country in 14 months if the Taliban fulfills its commitments. The document lays the groundwork for future negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, aimed at bringing a lasting peace to the country.


The US has agreed to facilitate the talks and lift sanctions from Taliban members by August, provided the negotiations commence as planned. Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada called on all of his fighters to honor and abide by the agreement. The US and Afghan governments said earlier that the peace agreement will include guarantees that Afghan territory will not be used by terrorist groups to target the US and its allies. Also, Washington and Kabul agreed on a prisoner exchange with the Taliban by March 10, vowing to release up to 5,000 and 1,000 people respectively. Calling the deal “a decisive step toward real peace in Afghanistan,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke about the victories against Al-Qaeda, the group behind the 9/11 attacks. “Al-Qaeda today is a shadow of its former self. We have decimated its leadership, and now we have the Taliban agreeing that Al-Qaeda must never again find safe haven in Afghanistan,” he said.

Read more …

Seeing 33 of his troops killed didn’t bring home Putin’s message to Erdogan. Whose claims are for domestic purposes only, until someone dares him.

‘Get Out Of The Way, Let Us Deal With Assad’, Erdogan Says He Told Putin (RT)

As tensions in Idlib province reach the boiling point, Turkey has asked Russia to let it fight the Syrian government face-to-face, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed. Erdogan asked Putin “to get out of the way” and let the Turkish troops deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Turkish leader told his AK Party on Saturday. Erdogan was explaining to lawmakers his government’s handling of the escalation in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, where Turkish and Syrian troops have engaged in several clashes over the past weeks. The hostilities have all but ruined Turkey’s 2018 agreement with Russia on de-escalating the violence in the area, which remains the last major stronghold of anti-government forces in Syria.

Describing his phone conversation with Putin, Erdogan said if Russia’s interest in Syria was to keep a military presence there, Turkey, a NATO member, does not object to it. I asked Mr Putin: What’s your business there? If you establish a base, do so but get out of our way and leave us face to face with the regime. Moscow intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2015 to help Damascus fight against jihadist groups. Moscow said helping the Syrian government prevented future attacks launched by this would-be entity against other nations, including Russia. Erdogan said Ankara now considers Syrian government troops a legitimate target for its attacks, claiming Damascus lost over 2,100 soldiers in Idlib.

It was not immediately clear if the casualty number only represents Syrian troops killed directly by the Turkish military or includes those killed by Turkish-backed armed groups. Erdogan added that “seven warehouses with chemicals” were also destroyed in Syria, but did not offer any details or evidence regarding whether Syria still had chemical weapons in its possession. The Turkish leader said fighting against the Syrian government is necessary to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Idlib, which would cause a new influx of refugees into Turkey across the border. Part of the Turkish response to the situation was opening the border with Europe to asylum-seekers. Erdogan said the EU failed to support Turkey, which already hosts over 3,6 million refugees from Syria and faces as many as 4 million new arrivals now.

Read more …

Does NATO Article 5 apply to members invading the sovereign soil of other nations?

Threat Of Russia-Turkey-NATO Hot War A Godsend For US Foreign Policy (RT)

Turkey is calling for NATO’s protection after 33 of its soldiers were killed in an apparent Syrian airstrike in Idlib, allegedly while fighting in terrorist ranks. In the regional chaos that ensues, only one player stands to gain.
Speculation over what’s to come next has seen #article 5 trending on Twitter in the hours following the attacks, after Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkey’s ruling AKP party, indicated to reporters in Ankara that he was looking at requesting formal NATO protection against Damascus and, by proxy, the Russian air force. “We call on NATO to [start] consultations. This is not [an attack] on Turkey only, it is an attack on the international community. A common reaction is needed. The attack was also against NATO,” Celik told Turkish media.

Article 5 of the NATO treaty says an attack on one member is an attack on them all. The US State Department also condemned the attack, stating that it stands by its “NATO ally Turkey.” It further stated that it continues to “call for an immediate end to this despicable offensive by the Assad regime, Russia and Iranian-backed forces.” Never one to let us down, the US envoy to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchinson also told journalists that “everything is on the table.” However, it is unclear if NATO has the stamina to back Turkey in any meaningful way in a war against a Syrian government which is backed by Russian air power. It is also unclear if Article 5 extends to NATO allies when they have effectively invaded a foreign entity. In fact, even if no corporate media entity would willingly admit it, the nation defending itself in this specific set of facts is Syria – not Turkey.

That being said, Ankara has found a way to ensure that European nations do not flat-out ignore the situation. Just recently, Turkey reportedly opened up the Idlib border to allow an influx of Syrian refugees to flee to Europe, which will surely magnify regional tensions to a significant extent. Moscow has responded to the situation by highlighting Ankara’s relationship with the various jihadist entities in Syria. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the airstrike was carried out when the Syrian Army was repelling an offensive by Syria’s official al-Qaeda offshoot, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, inside the Idlib “de-escalation zone.” Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to the war in Syria can appreciate that Ankara’s material and financial support for terrorist groups in Syria, including and especially Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), has long been documented.

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Erdogan buys Russian anti-rocket systems, then asks NATO for support with air defense.

Greece Vetoes NATO Communique Intended to Support Turkey in Syria (GR)

Greece blocked the issuance of a joint communique from NATO on Friday night, intended to support Turkey in its war inside Syrian territory. According to Greece’s Kathimerini daily, which quotes Greek Foreign Ministry officials, Athens decided to block the joint NATO declaration because several of its members denied Greece’s demand to add a paragraph, which would have mentioned the issue of refugee and migrant influx from Turkey to Greece. According to this report, the USA, the UK, France, and Germany disagreed with Greece’s demand.


Meanwhile, Turkey asked NATO for additional support, particularly in its air defense in Syria. Most of the members of the North Atlantic alliance see this situation as an opportunity to bring Turkey closer to its allies in the West, pausing Ankara’s flirt with Russia. This was the reason why most of NATO’s ”big” players did not want to anger Turkey, by adding a clause that would mention immigration, particularly at a time when Ankara declares its inability to deal with approximately 4 million refugees and migrants currently in its territory.

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Greece has sent in the army to hold of some 13,000 migrants at the border. Either the EU acts now, or people are going to be killed.

Turkey Minister: 76,358 Migrants Headed To Border With Greece (K.)

Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu claims, in a Twitter post, that 76,358 migrants had passed through the border city of Edirne by Sunday morning on their way to the border crossing with Greece. “As of 09.55 hours, the number of immigrants leaving our country via Edirne is 76 thousand 358,” said Soylu, according to the Demiroren News Agency. Turkey has opened its borders for migrants to cross into the EU and has aided them by providing buses to Edirne.

Read more …

 

 

 

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Sep 132019
 
 September 13, 2019  Posted by at 9:44 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Marc Chagall The watering trough 1925

 

The Dogs in the Street Know (Craig Murray)
Speaker Bercow Warns Boris Johnson Against Disobeying Brexit Law (BBC)
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Must Face Criminal Charges (CNBC)
US House Panel Wants Boeing To Allow Employee Interviews On 737 MAX (R.)
US Pressures Israel To Drop China ‘Belt And Road’ Investments (ZH)
Huawei CEO Offers To License 5G Technology To American Companies (F.)
Mnuchin Says 100-Year Treasury Bond Possible (R.)
US Justice Department To Release Name Of Shadowy Figure In 9/11 Case (R.)
Trump’s Taliban Talks Led by Neocon Operation Cyclone Agent (MPN)
Palace Revolt at the ECB, Legitimacy of Policy out the Window (WS)
The New ECB QE Is A Mistake. Here Is What It Should Have Done (Lacalle)

 

 

A Scotsman taking down the Queen.

The Dogs in the Street Know (Craig Murray)

There are some very obvious facts in British politics which nobody seems to be saying. Joanna Cherry stated in her successful court case that “the dogs in the street know” that the real reason that Boris Johnson had prorogued parliament was to prevent parliament from having an effective say on the outcome of Brexit. The documents that the government was forced to produce to the Scottish Courts proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that was indeed Johnson’s motive. So why are we expected to believe that what you knew and I knew, what Joanna Cherry knew, what the very dogs in the street knew, was not known to the Queen?

Do we really believe that the Queen was “misled” and that she and her courtiers were the only people in the entire country who actually believed that Johnson just wanted the longest prorogation for 89 years to prepare a really good Queen’s speech? Are we really expected to believe that the Queen had not noticed that Brexit was at a crucial stage and the effect that prorogation would have on parliament’s say in the process? This is obviously complete and utter nonsense. The Queen has better sources of information than any of us and knew exactly what was happening. She was not “misled” by Boris Johnson, she was his ally in a common purpose. She absolutely understood both the context and the effect of the prorogation. All this utter nonsense about the Queen being “lied to” and “misled” is part of this strange myth of the ultimate goodness of authority which is a recurring theme in human societies.

Peasants died under the knout while building the Trans-Siberian railway thinking “if only the good Tsar knew.” The Queen is not a naive figure of Christ like innocence taken in by Boris Johnson, she is an ultra wealthy woman of very conservative views embedded in a social circle dominated by very rich and reactionary people. To repeat what I have repeatedly explained, it was unconstitutional for the Queen to appoint Boris Johnson in the first place when it was plain as a pikestaff that he could not command a parliamentary majority. That initial crime (and I use the word advisedly) was compounded by the decision to prorogue parliament to enable her no majority Prime Minister to govern. In a sane world we should be getting out the pitchforks. Instead people are tut-tutting about the poor Queen being misled.

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Prior to his election to Speaker, Bercow was a longtime member of the Conservative Party.

Speaker Bercow Warns Boris Johnson Against Disobeying Brexit Law (BBC)

John Bercow has vowed “creativity” in Parliament if Boris Johnson ignores the law designed to stop a no-deal Brexit. The Commons Speaker also said in a speech that the only possible Brexit was one backed by MPs. A new law, passed before the suspension of Parliament, forces the PM to seek a delay until 31 January 2020, unless a deal or no-deal exit is approved by MPs by 19 October. The PM has said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than ask for a delay. Delivering a lecture in London, Mr Bercow said: “Not obeying the law must surely be a non-starter. Period.” He said it would be a “terrible example to set to the rest of society”.


“The only form of Brexit which we will have, whenever that might be, will be a Brexit that the House of Commons has explicitly endorsed,” he said. “Surely, in 2019, in modern Britain, in a parliamentary democracy, we – parliamentarians, legislators – cannot in all conscience be conducting a debate as to whether adherence to the law is or isn’t required.” He called it “astonishing” that “anyone has even entertained the notion”. If the government comes close to disobeying the Act, the MP said that Parliament “would want to cut off such a possibility and do so forcefully”. “If that demands additional procedural creativity in order to come to pass, it is a racing certainty that this will happen, and that neither the limitations of the existing rule book nor the ticking of the clock will stop it doing so,” he added.

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Hmm. Should McCabe run free?

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Must Face Criminal Charges (CNBC)

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe has failed in his efforts to convince the Justice Department not to file potential criminal charges against him for allegedly lying to federal agents, NBC News reported Thursday. Lawyers for McCabe, who has not been charged in the case, reportedly met last month with a top Justice official the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and in what were believed to be talks seeking to dissuade then from filing criminal charges. The Washington Post reported last week that federal prosecutors for months have been using a grand jury to investigate McCabe, a critic of President Donald Trump.

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They have to ASK?

US House Panel Wants Boeing To Allow Employee Interviews On 737 MAX (R.)

Congress on Thursday asked Boeing Co’s chief executive to make several employees available for interviews as part of a congressional probe into the design, development and certification of 737 MAX aircraft involved in two crashes that killed 346 people. House of Representatives Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio and Representative Rick Larsen, who chairs the aviation subcommittee, said in a statement that while Boeing has provided substantial documents and shared senior management’s perspective, “it’s important to the committee’s investigation to hear from relevant Boeing employees.”

The committee plans another Boeing hearing in the coming weeks and previously asked whistleblowers to come forward with any information about the plane’s development. Boeing has provided more than 300,000 pages of documents, a person briefed on the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Boeing said in a statement it was “deeply disappointed the committee chose to release private correspondence given our extensive cooperation to date. We will continue to be transparent and responsive to the committee.”

[..] CEO Dennis Muilenburg said at an investor conference on Wednesday that the company is still targeting “early fourth quarter for getting the airplane back up in the air” but added that “ultimately return-to-service timing will be determined by the regulator.” The FAA has repeatedly said it will not certify the plane to fly again until it is safe to do so. The European Aviation and Space Agency said on Tuesday it “intends to conduct its own test flights separate from, but in full coordination with, the FAA. The test flights are not scheduled yet, the date will depend on the development schedule of Boeing.”

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If they’re pressuring Israel, they much be pressuring others too.

US Pressures Israel To Drop China ‘Belt And Road’ Investments (ZH)

As China executes on its “Belt and Road” global trade scheme, more than 130 countries who have either committed to or expressed interest in the $600 billion initiative have been hard at work expanding their infrastructure to accommodate Beijing’s ambitious plan. And while President Trump has been pounding the table in an ongoing US-China trade war, progress made on Belt and Road threatens to reduce US leverage over Beijing – putting US allies such as Israel, which extended a 25-year offer for the operation of the Haifa terminal to state-controlled Shanghai International Port Group – in a tricky position, according to Bloomberg’s Ivan Levingston.

“With national elections approaching on Sept. 17, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can ill afford to alienate the Trump administration on its signature international issue. Trump has endeared himself to Netanyahu by transferring the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the disputed Golan Heights. Netanyahu reciprocated by naming a new Golan settlement after Trump and praising the American leader for, among other things, quitting the Iranian nuclear accord. “Over the years, Israel has been blessed to have many friends who sat in the Oval Office, but Israel has never had a better friend than you,” Netanyahu told the president during a March trip to the White House. An October Pew study found that 69% of Israelis had confidence in Trump’s performance as president, and many of Netanyahu’s campaign ads prominently feature the U.S. leader.” -Bloomberg

Of note, China is currently Israel’s second-largest trading partner with around $11.5 billion in annual transactions in 2018, according to the report. Meanwhile, the United States has pressed Israel to create a buffer with China in the interest of national security – which would look something like the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (the same one that rubber-stamped Russia’s purchase of 20% of America’s Uranium). “Israel and Israeli companies are quickly coming to the realization that it’s going to be difficult to sustain business as usual in work with China while keeping the United States as the primary partner,” said Daniel Shapiro, Barack Obama’s US ambassador to Israel.

Read more …

How is Huawei linked to Belt & Road?

Huawei CEO Offers To License 5G Technology To American Companies (F.)

Zhengfei Ren, the CEO and founder of Huawei offered an olive branch to the Trump administration: License the Chinese telecommunications giant’s 5G technology to American companies, with the caveat that the U.S. government ““the U.S. side has to accept us at some level for that to happen.” Currently, the use of Huawei equipment is banned from U.S. networks over concerns that it could be used by the Chinese government as a method to spy or disrupt telecom systems. The offer [..] would essentially allow the U.S. to finally get in the race for 5G supremacy which is now dominated by Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE, Ericsson of Sweden and Nokia from Finland.


“Huawei is open to sharing our 5G technologies and techniques with U.S. companies, so that they can build up their own 5G industry. That would create a balanced situation between China, the U.S. and Europe,” told Ren to the newspaper. [..] Ren added that the U.S. companies would be allowed to modify as they see fit the software code used to run any of Huawei’s 5G equipment or even change it and use their own. [..] Ren added that the American licensees will be able to sell their 5G equipment based on Huawei’s intellectual property anywhere in the world, except in China.

Read more …

“We are going to start with 50 years, and if the answer is, 50-years is successful, we’ll consider 100-year bonds..”

Mnuchin Says 100-Year Treasury Bond Possible (R.)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday said the United States will issue 50-year bonds if there is “proper demand,” a moved aimed at “derisking” the government’s $22 trillion of debt and locking in low interest rates. “We are going to start with 50 years, and if the answer is, 50-years is successful, we’ll consider 100-year bonds,” Mnuchin said in an interview with New York Times’ DealBook and streamed online live, adding that he began looking into the possibility of ultra-long U.S. bonds two years ago. The longest-dated U.S. Treasury currently is 30 years.


U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed a different fix for the rising cost of the record U.S. debt, calling on Wednesday on the “boneheads” at the Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates to below zero so as to reduce interest-rate payments. The Fed is widely expected to cut interest rates by a modest quarter of a percentage point next week when U.S. rate-setters meet. Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policymakers see U.S. economic conditions as still generally favorable despite a global slowdown and a still-unresolved U.S.-China trade war, and they have consistently pushed back against the notion of negative rates or of setting rates to cater to political pressure.

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Is something moving?

US Justice Department To Release Name Of Shadowy Figure In 9/11 Case (R.)

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday said it would release the name of an individual sought by people who are suing the government of Saudi Arabia for alleged involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking attacks. U.S. prosecutors in New York said in a court filing that Attorney General William Barr had decided not to invoke state secrets and will share the person’s name with attorneys involved in the case. The decision could help victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and their family members, who charge in a long-running lawsuit that the Saudi government supported the hijackers who crashed jet liners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people.


The Saudi government has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks. The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. The case, filed in 2003, received a boost in 2016 when Congress passed a law making it easier to sue foreign governments for alleged involvement in terrorism. The plaintiffs have been trying to obtain redacted material from a 2012 FBI report which indicated the agency was investigating two Saudi officials, Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, and said there was evidence that a third, unnamed party had ordered them to help the hijackers. Attorneys will now get to learn the name of that person, though their identity will remain under seal.

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Scary people.

Trump’s Taliban Talks Led by Neocon Operation Cyclone Agent (MPN)

John Bolton wasn’t the only veteran of the conflict in Afghanistan now charged with resolving it. Nor was he the only PNAC veteran in the Trump administration. U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, the top American official in the negotiations, was a PNAC charter member and has been quietly overseeing the destruction of Afghanistan for most of his political career — longer than the Taliban has existed as an organization. Khalilzad worked closely with late National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who took a leading role in Operation Cyclone under President Carter. The secret CIA program pumped the Afghan Mujahideen up with cash, weapons, training, and jihadist school books.

The Brooklyn-based Al-Kifah Afghan Refugee Center — a front for Maktab al-Khidamat, an organization co-founded by Osama bin Laden — would become key to this endeavor. Brzezinski’s aim, as he stated, was to give the Soviets their own Vietnam quagmire. Back then, his message to the Mujahideen fighters that would become al-Qaeda and the Taliban was: “Your cause is right and God is on your side.” Even after the devastating attacks of September 11, Brzezinski defended the decision to support the Mujahideen in the name of defeating the Soviet Union.

The United States’ support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and later Bosnia, was intended to bleed the Soviet Union. It is no surprise that the same leeches — the Taliban and al-Qaeda — that were trained by the United States, would turn on their masters. In the case of the Taliban, clinging on to the U.S. for nearly two decades, slowly sucking away all the while. In the case of al-Qaeda, the attacks on the World Trade Center dealt massive blows. The end-game tactics mirror the CIA’s philosophy in training the Mujahideen against the USSR. U.S officials like Khalilzad would spend decades in luxurious buildings in and around Washington while the people of Afghanistan would continue to suffer nearly another two decades of conflict because of their policies.

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Wolf Richter sees the ECB falling to bits. Wonder what Lagarde is doing these days.

Palace Revolt at the ECB, Legitimacy of Policy out the Window (WS)

ECB President Mario Draghi, who is on his way out, will, as we’re learning more and more, do anything to push his agenda and make it stick at the ECB long after he leaves, but whatever his agenda may be, it’s clearly unrelated to the European economy which has been buckling under the consequences of his agenda: the destructive weight of negative interest rates and QE. And in the process, he is destroying the legitimacy of the ECB’s policy. The latest incident was on Thursday. During the press conference following the ECB’s policy meeting, he lied to reporters, claiming that the “consensus was so broad there was no need to take a vote,” when in fact he had a revolt on his hand during the meeting by the presidents of the national central banks that represented half of the economy of the Eurozone, and by members of the Executive Board.

Among the key policy changes the ECB announced on Thursday was the restart of QE to the tune of €20 billion a month and a tiny 10-basis point cut in its deposit rate, from the old negative -0.4% to the new negative -0.5%. The announcement also included a provision to help banks – which have been getting re-crushed by these idiotic negative interest rates – to survive those negative interest rates: the ECB would exempt part of the banks’ deposits at the ECB from negative rates in a two-tier system. It was the QE portion of the decision that had triggered the unprecedented revolt during the meeting. “Officials with knowledge of the matter” told Bloomberg that during the contentious meeting, the members of the Governing Council and of the Executive Board who vigorously opposed the restart of QE included but was not limited to:

• Jens Weidmann, President of the Bundesbank • Francois Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France • Klaas Knot, President of the Dutch central bank • Ewald Nowotny, Governor of the Austrian central bank • Ardo Hansson, Governor of the Bank of Estonia • Sabine Lautenschlaeger, Member of the Executive Board • Benoit Coeure, Member of the Executive Board. The countries of the five heads of the national central banks, from Weidmann to Hansson, account for about half of the economy of the Eurozone. They opposed the restart of QE, but there was no vote – which is common in ECB proceedings when there is a consensus. But there was no consensus. And Draghi simply imposed his agenda.

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Mistake perhaps. But hardly an honest one, if you read Wolf Richter’s piece above. The ECB IS the mistake.

The New ECB QE Is A Mistake. Here Is What It Should Have Done (Lacalle)

The ECB is creating a dangerous bubble and should not have cut rates by 10bps nor added a new purchase program of €20 billion per month. 1) Eurozone states are already financing themselves at negative rates. There is no need for lower rates and this disguises real risk. This has saved governments more than 1 trillion euro in interest expenses. 2) The ECB has not abandoned its stimulus. It repurchases all maturities, launched a liquidity injection (TLTRO) in March 2019 and balance sheet stands at almost 40% of eurozone GDP. 3) Excess liquidity is 1.7 trillion euro. More liquidity does not lead agents to spend/invest more. There is no higher solvent credit demand because monetary policy perpetuates overcapacity and zombifies the economy. Share of zombie companies has soared c30% since 2013 (BIS).

4) Interest rates are already negative. This has caused a 23 billion euro loss for banks (according to Scope Ratings) and a worrying rise in junk debt demand. 5) There is no evidence of a need for more credit growth. Rather the opposite. The ECB believes the eurozone problem is one of excess saving and lack of demand when it is of excess debt and oversupply. 6) Negative rates zombify the economy and are a massive transfer of wealth from savers and productive sectors to the indebted and inefficient. 7) The ECB already accumulates a disproportionate amount of sovereign debt as well as corporate bonds of issuers that never had a problem financing themselves at low rates. This disguises risk and creates an enormous bubble.

8) The problem of the eurozone is not one of lack of stimuli, but an excess of them. Governments burden the productive private sector with higher taxes and unnecessary regulations, so economic surprise falls despite massive stimulus. 9) When this fails or -even worse- explodes, central planners will likely blame “markets” or “lack of stimulus” to repeat. 10) Saying that negative rates are “demanded” by investors is a sad excuse. Financial repression leads economic agents to take more risk for lower yields and central banks go from lenders of last resort to enablers of financial bubbles.

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Sep 082019
 
 September 8, 2019  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  9 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Horses and person 1939

 

 

To everyone used to receiving Automatic Earth posts in their email, I’m sorry but since yesterday they’re suddenly bouncing again en masse. This makes me very tired by now, but I’ll look for a solution. I suspect there may be a connection between this and Google accusing me of violating their rules, without telling me what rules I’m supposed to have violated.

 

 

Boris Johnson Will Challenge Law Stopping No-Deal Exit In Court (Ind.)
UK Minister Amber Rudd Resigns, Says Unclear Who Is Running Country (Ind.)
Churchill’s Grandson Blasts ‘Unreliable’ Boris And ‘Fraud’ Rees-Mogg (Mirror)
How Bad Is Boris Johnson? We Can’t Even Find The Words (G&M)
Trump Abruptly Cancels Afghan Peace Deal, Camp David Meeting With Taliban (BBC)
Ukraine And Russia Exchange Prisoners In Landmark Deal (BBC)
China’s August Exports Unexpectedly Shrink, Imports Remain Weak (R.)
China: A Paper Tiger In A Fragile Economy (LN)
Robert Mueller Helped Saudi Arabia Cover Up Its Role In 9/11 Attacks (NYP)
On the Road to Interview Lula, Into a Brazilian Black Hole (Pepe Escobar)

 

 

I’ll keep saying they should have gone to the courts much sooner. But it’s unclear what the courts can do.

Boris Johnson Will Challenge Law Stopping No-Deal Exit In Court (Ind.)

Boris Johnson will go to court to challenge the order from parliament to delay Brexit, the foreign secretary has revealed. Dominic Raab insisted the government would not break the law – after MPs passed legislation requiring him to seek an Article 50 extension – but said it would not comply either. Vowing to “test to the limit” what the new law demands, Mr Raab said: “We will look very carefully, legally at what it requires and what it doesn’t require.” And, pointing to the failed legal actions to stop parliament being suspended, he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge programme: “We had two legal challenges last week and we won both of those.”


The comments suggest the controversy is heading for the Supreme Court in late October, with Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s key aide, believed to be convinced there is a legal way out. Mr Raab also dismissed a warning by a former director of public prosecutions that the prime minister is heading for jail if he flouts the law as “ridiculous”. Shami Chakrabarti, Labour’s shadow attorney general, condemned the comments, saying: “Is that what we say to our kids? Is that what we say to vulnerable kids? It’s irresponsible and elitist.”

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Boris has claimed progress in talks with the EU, but the EU has said there’s no such thing.

UK Minister Amber Rudd Resigns, Says Unclear Who Is Running Country (Ind.)

Amber Rudd has claimed it is unclear who is running the country following her shock resignation from the government. The former work and pensions secretary said she did not think the cabinet was having “proper discussions about policy”. When asked who was running the country, if not the cabinet, she told The Andrew Marr Show: “If I knew that I would have perhaps had further conversations with the prime minister or them.” Ms Rudd, who announced her resignation from the cabinet on Saturday, said she quit because she had not seen enough evidence of planning for a no-deal Brexit.


She claimed she was shown a “one-page summary” when she asked for evidence of the government’s work in negotiating a deal with the European Union. “It’s 80 to 90 per cent of government time going into preparing for no deal,” she said. “It’s disproportionate.” She added: “There is no evidence of the deal. There is no formal negotiation taking place. “I think we should be doing so much more to get the deal.”

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Outspoken.

Churchill’s Grandson Blasts ‘Unreliable’ Boris And ‘Fraud’ Rees-Mogg (Mirror)

Sacked Tory rebel MP Sir Nicholas Soames says Boris Johnson is “nothing like” his grandfather Sir Winston Churchill – and called Jacob Rees-Mogg an “absolute fraud”. Sir Nicholas, 71, tore into the Prime Minister and his right-hand man in a scathing interview as “unreliable” Mr Johnson’s Brexit strategy lay in tatters. The MP for 37 years said of the PM: “Boris Johnson is nothing like Winston Churchill. “I don’t think anyone has called Boris a diplomat or statesman.


“We all know the pluses and minuses, everyone he has worked for says the same thing: he writes beautifully [but he’s] deeply unreliable.” And of Mr Rees-Mogg, he was even more unforgiving, telling the Times: “He is in serious danger of believing his own shtick. “He is an absolute fraud, he is a living example of what a moderately cut double-breasted suit and a decent tie can do with an ultra-posh voice and a bit of ginger stuck up his arse.” Sir Nicholas blasted Mr Rees-Mogg after the Leader of the House was pictured slouching on the front bench like a sunbed as the Prime Minister suffered one of several humiliating defeats this week.

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View from Canada. Whose head of state still is Elizabeth. “British politics today is what results from the collision of an unstoppable force, an immovable object and a clown car.

How Bad Is Boris Johnson? We Can’t Even Find The Words (Globe & Mail)

We begin this editorial with an apology to you, our faithful readers. In March, we described the Brexit situation, then careening through its third year and nowhere close to resolution, as an “omnishambles.” An omnishambles is a state of utter chaos, total disorder and perfect mismanagement – which brings us to our apology. If you’ve been paying any attention to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, you know that, in declaring United Kingdom politics to have reached peak shambolic six months ago, we spoke too soon. Oh, did we ever. Because if the Conservative government was making an omnishambles of Brexit back in the spring – a happy era now remembered as a halcyon age of a merely half-hearted appetite for national self-destruction – then what words can adequately describe the scale of Mr. Johnson’s achievements?

Megashambles? Summa cum laude shambles? Tyrannosaurus shambles? The-Chernobyl-reactor-just-exploded-and-the-dosimeter-reads-15,000-roentgen shambles? Mr. Johnson is the author of 11 books, some admittedly banged out in the careless haste that is his style. But this week, without breaking a sweat, the PM penned the Odyssey and the Iliad of shambles. He faced his first votes in Parliament and lost them; lost his minority government’s governing majority; sacked 21 of his own MPs, including his party’s longest-serving member and Winston Churchill’s grandson; provoked his own brother into resigning from cabinet, citing a conflict between “family loyalty and the national interest”; and lost control of the House of Commons while remaining so offside the chamber’s confidence that it will not yet allow him to resolve the matter by calling an election.

Mr. Johnson did all that, and more, in the space of two days. What will tomorrow bring? British politics today is what results from the collision of an unstoppable force, an immovable object and a clown car.

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Leaving should still be the priority.

Trump Abruptly Cancels Afghan Peace Deal, Camp David Meeting With Taliban (BBC)

US President Donald Trump says he has called off peace negotiations with the Taliban that sought to end America’s 18-year war in Afghanistan. Mr Trump tweeted he had been set to meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and senior Taliban leaders on Sunday. But he cancelled the secret meeting at his Camp David retreat after the militants admitted they were behind a recent attack that killed a US soldier. The US invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban in 2001. The militants had provided a safe haven for the al-Qaeda network to plan the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US. A source from the Taliban’s political office in Doha told the BBC that the group was set to hold an “urgent internal meeting” to discuss Mr Trump’s decision.


A meeting with the Taliban at Camp David, just ahead of the 18th anniversary of 9/11, would have been an extraordinary diplomatic move by the US president. The top US negotiator had announced a peace deal “in principle” on Monday. It was the result of nine rounds of talks between the US and Taliban representatives, held in Doha, the capital of the Gulf state of Qatar. Mr Trump’s tweets on Saturday evening appeared to put an end to nearly a year of painstaking negotiations which had excluded the Afghan government in Kabul, dismissed by the Taliban as American puppets. “Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, [the Taliban] admitted to an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers,” the president tweeted.

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I like.

Ukraine And Russia Exchange Prisoners In Landmark Deal (BBC)

Russia and Ukraine have completed a long-awaited exchange of prisoners. Those freed include 24 Ukrainian sailors and – controversially – a “person of interest” over the downing of flight MH17 which killed 298 people. The swap is hoped to ease tensions between the two neighbours. Greeting the Ukrainians at the airport, President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “We have to do all the steps to finish this horrible war.” Russia said it was glad its citizens had returned home. Relations between the two countries deteriorated dramatically in 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Russian-backed rebels began an insurgency in two regions of eastern Ukraine.

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The trade war can only be part of it.

China’s August Exports Unexpectedly Shrink, Imports Remain Weak (R.)

China’s exports unexpectedly fell in August while imports shrank for a fourth month, pointing to further weakness in the world’s second-largest economy and underlining a pressing need for more stimulus as the Sino-U.S. trade war escalates. Beijing is widely expected to announce more support measures in coming weeks to avert the risk of a sharper economic slowdown as the United States ratchets up trade pressure, including the first cuts in some key lending rates in four years. On Friday, the central bank cut banks’ reserve requirements for the seventh time since early 2018 to free up more funds for lending, days after a cabinet meeting signaled that more policy loosening may be imminent.


August exports fell 1% from a year earlier, the biggest fall since June, when it fell 1.3%, customs data showed on Sunday. Analysts had expected a 2.0% rise in a Reuters poll after July’s 3.3% gain. That’s despite analyst expectations that looming tariffs may have prompted some Chinese exporters to bring forward or “front-load” U.S.-bound shipments into August, a trend seen earlier in the trade dispute. Many analysts expect export growth to slow further in coming months, as evidenced by worsening export orders in both official and private factory surveys. More U.S. tariff measures will take effect on Oct. 1 and Dec. 15. Sunday’s data also showed China’s imports shrank for the fourth consecutive month since April. Imports dropped 5.6% on-year in August, slightly less than an expected 6.0% fall and unchanged from July’s 5.6% decline.

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Pon Zi.

China: A Paper Tiger In A Fragile Economy (LN)

We typically imagine the Chinese entrepreneur crunching numbers, working around the clock to boost the economy, and repeating Communist propaganda about the West being the supreme devil. But we might have it wrong. Considering that the major source of funding for tens of thousands of companies in China originates from the central bank’s printing press, the reality could be businessmen and employees getting plastered on baijiuand beating each other to death with Pokémon cards during office hours. Think of it as the Eastern version of The Wolf of Wall Street.

[..] Even prior to the trade war, the Chinese government had employed a series of measures to reverse the slump. Thanks to the dispute with the Americans, Beijing’s growth prospects are bearish, projected to fall to a 30-year low of 6.2% in the second quarter of 2019. Because of this, analysts anticipate the PBOC will impose another 50-basis-point RRR decrease. In addition, observers prognosticate that the central bank could cut at least one of its key policy interest rates later this month. This would be the first time since 2015. The routine intervention and stimulus have ostensibly metastasized the economy into an addict, reliant on its next fix. So, can the Chinese economy survive without the state?

In the last five years, China’s M2 money supply – a measurement of the money supply that includes cash, checking deposits, and liquid assets – has ballooned 120%. Since the country is being paralyzed by the trade spat and other negative trends that threaten its foundation, China is not showing any signs that it is ready to hit the pause button on money-printing. In fact, judging by previous remarks by PBOC heads, Beijing might rev it up even more, especially if the downturn intensifies. But can China print to infinity? It may have to because seemingly every area of the economy counts on being propped up by the Communists through cash injections, stimulus projects, and bailouts.

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“He was the master when it came to covering up the kingdom’s role in 9/11..”

Robert Mueller Helped Saudi Arabia Cover Up Its Role In 9/11 Attacks (NYP)

After a lengthy investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller charged Russia made “multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election” and said the incursion “deserves the attention of every American.” But former FBI investigators say their old boss didn’t feel the same concern when they uncovered multiple, systemic efforts by the Saudi government to assist the hijackers in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks — a far more consequential, to say nothing of deadly, foreign influence operation on America. As the head of the FBI at the time, they say Mueller was not nearly as interested in investigating that espionage conspiracy, which also involved foreign intelligence officers. Far from it, the record shows he covered up evidence pointing back to the Saudi Embassy and Riyadh — and may have even misled Congress about what he knew.


9/11 victims agree. “He was the master when it came to covering up the kingdom’s role in 9/11,” said survivor Sharon Premoli, who was pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center 18 years ago. “In October of 2001, Mueller shut down the government’s investigation after only three weeks, and then took part in the Bush [administration’s] campaign to block, obfuscate and generally stop anything about Saudi Arabia from being released,” added Premoli, now a plaintiff in the 9/11 lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. In fact, Mueller threw up roadblocks in the path of his own investigators working the 9/11 case, while making it easier for Saudi suspects to escape questioning, multiple case agents told me. Then he deep-sixed what evidence his agents did manage to uncover, according to the 9/11 lawsuit against the Saudis.

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Pepe with Lula and Dilma Rousseff, astonished at the changes in the country.

On the Road to Interview Lula, Into a Brazilian Black Hole (Pepe Escobar)

We were just beginning to hit cruising speed in our wide-ranging, 2 hour and 10 minute world exclusive interview with former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in his prison at the Federal Police building in Curitiba, in southern Brazil. And then it hit us hard when he told us: “The US was very much afraid when I discussed a new currency and Obama called me, telling me, ‘Are you trying to create a new currency, a new euro?’ I said, ‘No, I’m just trying to get rid of the U.S. dollar. I’m just trying not to be dependent.’”


It was the foundation stone of what would build into a complex, rolling Hybrid War coup, from NSA spying on the Brazilian government and leading national companies, to the Car Wash corruption investigation (now demolished as a monster racket) to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of Lula, and the emergence of the Purveyor of Chaos, Jair Bolsonaro. My journey started in Cambodia. I had spent hours wandering around Beng Mealea, the jungle squeezing the stony repose of the Angkorian ruins, meditating on the rise and fall of empires. The message popped up on my phone in the dead of night: the request for an interview with Lula, placed five months ago, had been approved. How soon could I get to Sao Paulo?

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Apr 172019
 


Jacques-Louis David Coronation of Napoleon in 1804 in Nôtre-Dame Cathedral 1805-7 (10 metres wide, 6 metres tall)

 

World Trade Suffers Biggest Collapse Since Financial Crisis (ZH)
Iran Parliament Declares US Central Command A ‘Terrorist Organization’ (RT)
CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump (MoA)
Affidavit Tries To Put WikiLeaks In Cahoots With The Taliban (ZH)
Suzie Dawson on Julian Assange’s Mistreatment (Unity4J)
Jesus Christ, Julian Assange: When Dissidents Become Enemies Of The State (JW)
First They Came For Assange (Varoufakis)
Macron Commits To Rebuilding Notre Dame Within Five Years (Ind.)
May Has ‘No Chance’ Of Avoiding EU Elections (Ind.)
Tory Deregulation Agenda Is Stalling Brexit Talks – Corbyn (G.)
Not In It To Win It: The Dirty Little Secret Of The Democrats’ 2020 Battle (G.)
Six-Decade Plankton Study Charts Rise Of Ocean Plastic Waste (G.)
Mark Carney Tells Global Banks They Cannot Ignore Climate Change (G.)
The Kids Aren’t Nearly Angry Enough (Spiegel)

 

 

The financial crisis is 11-12 years old. But the deception is brilliant: everybody thinks it’s over.

World Trade Suffers Biggest Collapse Since Financial Crisis (ZH)

The recent collapse in world trade volume is the worst since the financial crisis and as dangerous as during the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, according to The Telegraph. Data from the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis revealed that world trade volume dropped 1.8% in the three months to January compared to the preceding three months as a synchronized global downturn gained momentum. “An industrial slump has been triggered by a perfect storm of factors, including China’s slowdown, the car industry downturn, Brexit paralysis and Donald Trump’s attempt to upend the international trade system with tariffs on European and Chinese goods,” explained The Telegraph.

A further escalation of the trade war between the U.S. and China could spark a world trade recession. Already, Washington has imposed steep tariffs on Chinese imports worth $250bn in a tit-for-tat battle with industrial centers in Asia and Germany experiencing sharp drops in trade in recent months. The Telegraph describes the sudden loss in trade momentum is equivalent to the months after the dot com bubble imploded in 2001 when trade volumes sank as much as 2.2%. Today’s current move is the biggest fall since the financial crisis of 2007–2008 when global trade plummeted, diving as much as 12.7%. The IMF warned last week that this is a “delicate moment” for the global economy as many countries are in the midst of a severe slowdown.

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“We” are losing to Iran all over again.

Iran Parliament Declares US Central Command A ‘Terrorist Organization’ (RT)

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) has been designated as a “terrorist organization” by the Iranian parliament, in a mirror response to Washington’s blacklisting of Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard. All organizations, institutions and forces under CENTCOM command were acknowledged to be “terrorists” by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian MPs, who approved the contents of the bill, which also condemns the US move to blacklist the IRGC, an official military branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Armed Forces. “The Islamic Republic of Iran’s government and Armed Forces are required to adopt preventive actions and preemptive defensive measures whenever necessary, to deter any hostile US forces’ use of any possibilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran’s interests,” the bill states, according to Fars news.


Anyone offering military, intelligence, financial, or any other support to CENTCOM and its affiliate forces will be considered supporters of terrorism. The 13-article legislation also mandates the general staff to begin gathering intelligence about CENTCOM activities so that the material can be used in Iranian courts to prosecute specific individuals. The bill, however, does not mention the exact mechanisms through which Americans are expected to be brought to justice under Iranian laws. Last week the US, for the first time ever, designated an official foreign military institution –the IRGC– as a terrorist organization, as tensions between the states were pushed to the limit following President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iranian Nuclear deal (JCPOA) and the reintroduction of sanctions that followed.

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Ducks and babies. We kid you not.

CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump (MoA)

An ass kissing portrait of Gina Haspel, torture queen and director of the CIA, reveals that she lied to Trump to push for more aggression against Russia. In March 2018 the British government asserted, without providing any evidence, that the alleged ‘Novichok’ poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal was the fault of Russia. It urged its allies to expel Russian officials from their countries. The U.S. alone expelled 60 Russian officials. Trump was furious when he learned that EU countries expelled less than 60 in total. The expulsion marked a turn in the Trump administration’s relation with Russia: “The incident reflects a tension at the core of the Trump administration s increasingly hard-nosed stance on Russia: The president instinctually opposes many of the punitive measures pushed by his Cabinet that have crippled his ability to forge a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “

Today the New York Times portraits Gina Haspel’s relation with Trump. The writers seem sympathetic to her and the CIA’s position. They include an anecdote of the Skripal expulsion decision that is supposed to let her shine in a good light. But it only proves that the CIA manipulated the president for its own purpose: “Last March, top national security officials gathered inside the White House to discuss with Mr. Trump how to respond to the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian intelligence agent. London was pushing for the White House to expel dozens of suspected Russian operatives, but Mr. Trump was skeptical. …

[..] During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the strong option was to expel 60 diplomats. Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives. Ms Haspel was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option.

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Can we throw in Pol Pot next? I’ll see your Bin Laden and raise you a Stalin.

Affidavit Tries To Put WikiLeaks In Cahoots With The Taliban (ZH)

The document uses maximal and hyped language to describe “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States,” yet struggles to ascertain whether “illegal agreement that Assange and Manning reached” specifically led to the release of the document trove (obviously crucial for charges against Assange to hold up). Concerning a potential extradition to the US, “probable cause” is cited to be the hundreds of messages sent between Manning and Assange on the Jabber platform. The argument is that Assange and Manning understood that it “would cause injury to the United States,” especially with US forces active on the ground in Afghanistan.

But on this point of whether the leaks did actual harm and damage to US efforts, the document is left reaching, trying to spin and insinuate a narrative that puts WikiLeaks and terrorist groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda in cahoots. It starts by claiming that “after the release of the Afghanistan War Reports, a member of the Taliban contacted the New York Times.” The supposed Taliban member said, “We are studying the report… If they are US spies, then we will know how to punish them.” This strange and somewhat comical example is meant to support the notion that Assange ultimately aided America’s enemies with the leaks. [..] Worse, the affidavit makes Osama bin Laden — killed in a 2011 raid by US Navy Seals while living comfortably in an Abbottabad, Pakistan compound — out to be a WikiLeaks fan, given letters had been found instructing an al-Qaeda member to “gather” the publicly available material leaked by Manning.

Somehow this is meant to imply WikiLeaks in a round-about way assisted al-Qaeda’s mission. The FBI is perhaps left grasping with this “bin Laden benefited” theory given the relative flimsiness of evidence to support the original “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” aspect on which the case originated.

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Brilliant argument: “The question is not whether Julian is a journalist, the question is whether THEY are journalists.”

Suzie Dawson on Julian Assange’s Mistreatment (Unity4J)

Suzie Dawson powerfully expresses her feelings of righteous indignation on witnessing Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean Embassy, and reflects on his mistreatment by the establishment and their propaganda arm, the complicit corporate media.

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So let that Pope of yours stand up for Julian. Do something useful with the $600 million already donated for the Notre Dame. THAT is what your Jesus would have done.

Jesus Christ, Julian Assange: When Dissidents Become Enemies Of The State (JW)

And then there was Jesus Christ, an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day—namely, the Roman Empire—but provided a blueprint for civil disobedience that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him. Indeed, it is fitting that we remember that Jesus Christ—the religious figure worshipped by Christians for his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection—paid the ultimate price for speaking out against the police state of his day. A radical nonconformist who challenged authority at every turn, Jesus was a far cry from the watered-down, corporatized, simplified, gentrified, sissified vision of a meek creature holding a lamb that most modern churches peddle.


In fact, he spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire. Much like the American Empire today, the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day had all of the characteristics of a police state: secrecy, surveillance, a widespread police presence, a citizenry treated like suspects with little recourse against the police state, perpetual wars, a military empire, martial law, and political retribution against those who dared to challenge the power of the state. For all the accolades poured out upon Jesus, little is said about the harsh realities of the police state in which he lived and its similarities to modern-day America, and yet they are striking.

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Yanis has this completely upside down, like so many other well-meaning people:

“Let’s join forces to block #Assange’s extradition from any European country to the #US so that he can travel to Stockholm & give his accusers an opportunity to be heard”.

The accusers, if they are real, which is by no means clear, have been silenced by the Swedish government for a reason. And to say now that you can’t speak on the allegations because you too are a man, only reinforces that reason.

Assange has offered for years to talk, and for his accusers to be heard. That never needed to take place in Stockholm, and it does not now. It wouldn’t help anyone.

First They Came For Assange (Varoufakis)

My meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange all took place in the same small room. As the intelligence services of a variety of countries know, I visited Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy many times between the fall of 2015 and December 2018. What these snoops do not know is the relief I felt every time I left. I wanted to meet Assange because of my deep appreciation of the original WikiLeaks concept. As a teenager reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, I, too, was troubled by the prospect of a high-tech surveillance state and its likely effect on human relations. Assange’s early writings – particularly his idea of using states’ own technology to create a huge digital mirror that could show everyone what they were up to – filled me with hope that we might collectively defeat Big Brother.

By the time I met Assange, that early hope had faded. Surrounded by bookcases featuring Ecuadorian literature and government publications, we would sit and chat late into the night. A device on top of a bookshelf emitted mind-numbing white noise to counter listening devices. As time passed, the claustrophobic living room, the badly hidden ceiling-mounted camera pointing at me, the white noise, and the stale air made me want to run out into the street. Assange’s detractors have been saying for years that his confinement was self-inflicted: he hid in Ecuador’s embassy because he jumped bail in the United Kingdom to avoid answering sexual assault allegations in Sweden. As a man, I feel I have no right to express an opinion regarding those allegations. Women must be heard when reporting assault.

Only the violence that men have inflicted upon women for millennia is viler than the disrespect and denigration to which women are subjected when they speak up. I recall saying to Julian that, had it been me, I would want to confront my accusers, and listen to them carefully and respectfully, regardless of whether official charges had been brought. He replied that he, too, wanted that. “But, Yanis,” he said, “if I were to go to Stockholm, they would throw me in solitary and, before I got a chance to answer any allegations, I would be bundled into a plane heading for a US supermax prison.” To drive the point home, he showed me his lawyers’ offer to Swedish authorities to go to Stockholm if they guaranteed that he would not be extradited to the United States on espionage charges. Sweden never considered the proposal.

During Assange’s years in Ecuador’s embassy, in circumstances that the United Nations deemed “arbitrary detention,” many friends and colleagues mocked his fear – and lambasted me for believing him. Last September, the historian and feminist intellectual Germaine Greer summed up that belief on Australian public radio: “He won’t be extradited to the United States,” she said derisively, blaming Julian’s lawyers for misleading him into fearing such an extradition while collecting his book’s royalties.

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Make that 50. Jesus himself would have to help. Alternatively, we can see this as a sign that Macron doesn’t expect to last as president for 5 years.

Macron Commits To Rebuilding Notre Dame Within Five Years (Ind.)

French president Emmanuel Macron promised that Notre Dame will be renovated within five years and will be “even better than before” after the devastating fire that ravaged much of the building. Investigators have already begun assessing the damage and questioning people to try to establish what started the blaze that consumed the roof and spire of the 850-year-old Gothic masterpiece. More then €600m has already been raised for rebuilding and restoration and the UK has said it stands ready to help. Firefighters battled for 14 hours to extinguish the flames, as onlookers feared the entire structure would be wrecked. But Parisians breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear the twin medieval bell towers had been spared and later when fire investigators revealed that “most precious” treasures have been saved.


They included the Crown of Thorns, a relic venerated by Christians and believed to have been worn by Jesus Christ, as well as the cathedral’s 18th-century organ and a number of artworks. European Council president Donald Tusk called on the European Union’s member countries to help, saying the site in central Paris is a symbol of what binds Europe together. The fire, which began on Monday evening, is thought to have been caused by an accident rather than arson, the Paris public prosecutor said. Architects warned repairs could take decades but in a televised address to the nation Mr Macron said: “We will rebuild Notre Dame even more beautifully, and I want it to be completed in five years, we can do it.”

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“..experts have concluded..”

May Has ‘No Chance’ Of Avoiding EU Elections (Ind.)

Theresa May has “no chance” of passing her Brexit deal in time to pull the UK out of the European parliament elections and avoid a likely devastating defeat, experts have concluded. Time has already effectively run out on attempts to ratify the agreement by 22 May, they say – despite the prime minister insisting talks with Labour can still deliver a compromise before the deadline. The verdict puts the Conservatives on course to lose most of their MEPs, polls suggest, as Leave voters protest at the failure to deliver Brexit, a disastrous result that would trigger huge pressure on Ms May to resign. The staging of the elections will also be a personal humiliation for the prime minister, who repeatedly told MPs they should not take place, three years after the Brexit referendum.


More talks with Labour are planned, as No 10 claims the complex (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill – required to ratify EU withdrawal – can clear parliament before voters go to the polls on 23 May. But two respected think tanks have told The Independent the timetable is a fantasy, with one suggesting it will take “several months” to approve the legislation, which could involve up to 100 votes. Unlike the simple meaningful vote, the full legislation will trigger lengthy and gruelling parliamentary trench warfare, with echoes of the bitter battles over the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties. Approval of Maastricht took 41 days in 1993, while Lisbon required 25 days in 2008 – but there are only 17 sitting days planned before 22 May.

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There is no way they could ever agree.

Tory Deregulation Agenda Is Stalling Brexit Talks – Corbyn (G.)

Jeremy Corbyn has said Brexit talks with the government are stalling because of a Tory desire for post-withdrawal deregulation, including as part of a US trade deal. Corbyn said Labour had been putting forward a robust case for a customs union during the talks over the past week but suggested he feared the two sides would not find common ground. “There has to be access to European markets and above all there has to be a dynamic relationship to protect the conditions and rights that we’ve got for environment and consumer workplace rights,” he said. “We’ve put those cases very robustly to the government and there’s no agreement as yet.”


Meetings are scheduled this week between ministers and shadow ministers on environmental protections, security and workers’ rights, which Corbyn described as “quite interesting, quite long technical discussions, particularly on environment regulations”. However, there will be no discussion before Easter on the big issues of a customs union or a confirmatory referendum. Corbyn underlined again that an agreement could only be reached if Theresa May was prepared to accept Labour’s central demand for a common external tariff policy with the EU. “The government doesn’t appear to be shifting the red lines because they’ve got a big pressure in the Tory party that actually wants to turn this country into a deregulated, low-tax society which will do a deal with Trump. I don’t want to do that,” he said.

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The Delusional Party.

Not In It To Win It: The Dirty Little Secret Of The Democrats’ 2020 Battle (G.)

Political scientists are quick to point out two reasons why a record number of candidates is running for president on the Democratic side in 2020. One: the Republican president, Donald Trump, is vulnerable with a low-40s approval rating, so the Democratic nominee has a good shot at winning the White House. Two: there’s no bigfoot candidate this time around – no incumbent, no Hillary Clinton – to dissuade other potential candidates from running. Those conditions have lured 15 major candidates so far into the race for the Democratic nomination, with as many as half a dozen more potentially getting in, including former vice-president Joe Biden, who has yet to officially declare. The previous record for major candidates in a presidential primary field was 17, on the Republican side in 2016.


But analysts also nod to a third factor inflating the gigantic 2020 Democratic field, a not-quite-dirty little secret about presidential politics. The fact is, not all of the people running for president are actually running for president. “There is almost always at least a few candidates in these kinds of fields that are either there to push an issue agenda, or these are candidates who are interested in building their name recognition, building their stature and status within the party,” said John Sides, professor of political science at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of The Monkey Cage politics analysis site.

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How much plastic is inside of you?

Six-Decade Plankton Study Charts Rise Of Ocean Plastic Waste (G.)

A trove of data showing when the Atlantic began choking with plastic has been uncovered in the handwritten logbooks of a little-known but doggedly persistent plankton study dating back to the middle of the last century. From fishing twine found in the ocean in the 50s, then a first carrier bag in 1965, it reflects how the marine refuse problem grew from small, largely ignored incidents to become a matter of global concern. The unique dataset, published in Nature Communications, is based on records from the continuous plankton recorder, a torpedo-shaped marine sampling device that has been towed across more than 6.5m nautical miles of ocean over the past 60 years.


Bryozoans, nudibranchs, crabs, and barnacles live on a clear plastic bottle in the ocean. Photograph: Justin Hofman/Greenpeace/PA

Based firstly in Hull, then Edinburgh and Plymouth, the long-running programme was initially designed to collect pelagic plankton, which are an indicator of water quality and also a source of food for whales and other marine life. But the operators have also kept a chart-and-counter track of entanglements that disrupted their work: what snared the equipment, where it happened and when. This has proved a valuable source of data on plastic waste, according to contemporary researchers. “This consistent time series provides some of the earliest records of plastic entanglement, and is the first to confirm a significant increase in open ocean plastics in recent decades,” the paper notes.

The start of the problem was so slow it was barely noticed. The log shows strands of fishing twine found off the east coast of Iceland in 1957, then a carrier bag in waters to the north-west of Ireland eight years later. The paper states this was a couple of years before the first reports of turtles and seabirds becoming ensnared in plastic. Over the following decades the problem grew steadily. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, fewer than 1% of tows were disrupted by entanglements with synthetic materials. By the 90s it was almost 2%, and in the first decade of this century the increase “was of an order of magnitude”, according to the paper. The figure is now hovering somewhere between 3% and 4%.

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Note: if you find yourself agreeing with Carney, and you fail to see the absurdity in this, seek treatment. Carney is a full-time douche. He’s saying going green is a profit opportunity.

Mark Carney Tells Global Banks They Cannot Ignore Climate Change (G.)

The global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian. In an article published in the Guardian on Wednesday aimed at the international financial community, Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, and Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Banque de France, said financial regulators, banks and insurers around the world had to “raise the bar” to avoid catastrophe. They said: “As financial policymakers and prudential supervisors we cannot ignore the obvious physical risks before our eyes. Climate change is a global problem, which requires global solutions, in which the whole financial sector has a central role to play.”


The warning comes as concern over the impact of climate change and the lack of urgent action is increasing, reflected in the Extinction Rebellion protests and schoolchildren’s strikes across the world. The heads of two of the world’s most influential central banks urged other financial regulators around the world to carry out climate change stress tests to spot any risks in the system, while also calling for more collaboration between nations on the issue. They warned that a “massive reallocation of capital” was necessary to prevent global warming above the 2°C maximum target set by the Paris climate agreement, with the banking system required to play a pivotal role. “If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they will fail to exist,” Carney and De Galhau said.

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